Hello heroes and heroines,
We hope you had a great start to 2026!
A little later than planned, we want to share a 2025 recap with you.
Let’s start with some of our highlights in 2025:
VIP Pass
The VIP Pass is well-received by most of you, even though the start was a bit bumpy. We should have communicated that the first introduction in September was only a test phase. Based on your feedback, we quickly decided to make the VIP Pass a permanent feature. Currently, we’re thinking about ways to expand it further.
New Class: Plaguedoctor
In a big survey at the start of 2025, the Plague Doctor was able to prevail against the Monk, Ninja, Trickster, Beast Master, and Pyromaniac. After a lot of beta testing combined with your feedback, EU24 was the first server to start with our new class. Since then, around 10.000 characters became the Plague Doctor for their adventure.
Surveys
Previously, we used Google Forms via InGame Mails, after Betas, or specifically only on Discord, this resulted in a low response amount per survey. To get a better picture of you and also understand your needs much clearer we put effort into the new survey system. The survey for our new class highlighted the importance of collaborating with you and receiving your feedback on (new) content. Since then, we have frequently used the in-game survey tool to gather your thoughts. This tool has increased your survey participation a lot. What was before a few hundred to 3000 is now up to 37724 participating unique users on a single survey; thank you for that! We want to continue this approach, but still need to find the right balance to avoid overloading you with weekly surveys. We know that you wish to see the results of all surveys in detail, and we will try to find a good approach for communicating these.
Please keep in mind that not everything we show you in surveys is done and finished. Most of the time, things will be in a very early state being a first impression for you.
Arcane Toilet Upgrade
With the help of your feedback and beta tests, we designed a new upgrade of the Arcane Toilet. With the extension, we aimed to clarify its impact on the game and give items greater importance. After several iterations and beta tests, the effort paid off: the upgrade was well received, and your feedback was positive.
QoL Changes
Witch Rotation
You get a daily request from the witch for a different item type she can put into her cauldron. After all 9 types have been requested, the rotation starts again, whereby the sequence of items is always randomly selected again. During the “Witches' Dance” the requests stop, but continue afterwards.
Multi-Feeding Your Pets
To save a little time on daily tasks, we introduced multi-feeding, allowing you to feed your pet with only one click for the whole day.
Performance Updates
Over the course of 2025, we held several events and server starts. We monitored these launches closely, focusing on server performance and fixing issues as soon as possible. Over time, we prevented more problems, enabling a smooth launch with EU25. We're optimistic that upcoming launches will also run more steadily.
From 30 to 60 FPS
You often asked for a higher FPS to get a better gaming experience. You now have the option to run the game at 60 FPS on every device.
Hell Tokens from Hell Attacks
For a long time, guild members took all the earned Hell Tokens with them when leaving a guild. With the first Hellevator of 2025, we bound the Hell Tokens from Hell Attacks to the guild. Since then, those tokens stay in the guild if the member decides to leave.
Battle Messages
If a guild member signs up for a fight against the Hydra or a Guild Portal, the guild leaders and officers receive a message.
System Messages
We added a fourth tab in your mailbox to separate S&F system messages from others. We also included a timer that shows the auto-delete time if you don't decide to delete the message before that time (excluding news).
Seasonal Epic Graphic Sets
The graphics for the seasonal epic sets received a bit of a polish. We added greater visual variety, which makes the events stand out more from each other.
Showing Drop Chances for Legendary Items
You asked for more transparency regarding the drop changes for legendary items. With the Christmas Legendary Dungeon, we added the drop chances for the different legendary items on the info screen.
Armory Drop Chances
The new armory balances obtained items across all classes. Therefore, the drops depend on the classes: Characters with two-handed weapons are guaranteed to receive an epic item, characters with one-handed weapons have a chance to receive specific legendary items, and characters with a shield have a chance to receive a legendary shield as well.
Blog
After introducing the blog in 2025, we’re constantly trying to expand and improve it to provide you with more insights. Although we write the articles, you’re the one reading them. Therefore, let us know what you’re interested in.
Polaris Convention, our very first convention
We never had an offline appearance with Shakes & Fidget (and Mobile Dungeon) like this before. A big booth with our creators, artists, loot to catch, and more. We had so much fun that we already attended the first event of 2026: MAG-C in Erfurt. There’s a matching blog article providing you with some details about the weekend.
First Player reached level 800
Around the end of the year, our first player reached level 800. Shoutout to DoktorDarm, you did an amazing job!
With a long list of great things, we also want to address things that didn’t work out as planned:
Deeds & Titles
A feature with great potential but also controversy. Your feedback shows many players like it, while many don’t. The latter is partly due to bugs, performance issues, and other problems. But also, the feature itself. We are further looking into the issues that are poping up and trying to adjust the feature here and there.
Communication
Yes, we can improve our communication with you. For example, by informing you earlier about upcoming features or gather your valuable feedback. In some cases, early input lets us consider your thoughts before publishing a feature; in other cases, more insights might help you understand our decision process (e.g., development timeline, postponing events). There’s a lot of room for improvement in this direction; however, it’s one of our goals to have better and more transparent communication with you during the course of 2026. So please bear with us while we’re learning (and probably making mistakes) how to do this better.
At this point, we also want to address the failed Q&A at the end of our live stream before Christmas. As our roadmap announced, we planned to respond to the chat every now and then and close the stream with a Q&A. Due to time constraints, we skipped both. However, we read all of your comments and took notes.
Push Notification
It’s been an ongoing problem for a long time. We understand how frustrating this is for you. But be assured, we did not plan for the fix to take this long. With Update 28.500, we have managed to solve some of the issues, but there is still much to do. We really hope to find a solution as soon as possible and see that only about 10% of the players still have issues.
Postponing Events
Sometimes we have to postpone events or new features on short notice for various reasons. Unfortunately, it’s hard to promise to prevent such situations completely, but we strive to be more transparent with our decisions.
The year has already started, so what are our plans for 2026?
(Please note that this serves as a bit of a substitute for this month's roadmap)
Arena Manager
We have discussed reworking the existing arena manager for some time. Our goal is a more tactical decision-making process, comprehensible choices, a faster end, and more. Overall, a more enjoyable feature for you. Internal tests are planned to begin in a few weeks. We also plan a beta to collect player feedback, though the exact timing is not set in stone yet.
XP and Gold Curve
There are known significant problems with the XP and gold curve for high-level players, which we plan to fix in the future. This year, we will develop an internal concept with the Alpha Group. Once we have concrete details, we will update you on the blog.
Quality of Life Improvements
An ongoing task for every year, as we constantly try to improve Shakes & Fidget, whether with a small or large update.
Customization Feature
The desire for customization came up some time ago. We cannot announce a release date yet, but we welcome your feedback through surveys to include your input in our development process.
Including Your Feedback
We already mentioned the surveys and your feedback in the text above. But, as a last topic, we also want to highlight it. We aim to take your feedback into account as much as possible. Your feedback matters to us and really helps to shape Shakes & Fidget. Thanks for taking part in surveys, reporting issues when they arise, sharing your thoughts about the game, and overall, being an active community member!
To those who have read this far: Thank you! There are probably many more topics we could address, but we also need to come to an end. If you’re interested in Thorsten’s (CEO of Playa Games) view on 2025, watch the end-of-the-year live stream with Mo on YouTube (the conversation is in German, but English subtitles are available). The stream includes topics we didn’t mention here.
Have a great 2026, we're looking forward to many more years with you!
Shakes & Fidget Team
