Lester’s Arcade Beta 2.14: The Locker Opens and the Tower Goes Ranked

Beta 2.14 is the biggest patch since the arcade went Ranked. There’s a new Locker full of animated unlockables, Tower of Power finally plays for the leaderboards, your arcade record can earn you roles on our Discord, and every cabinet got new art, new motion and a stack of fixes.

• 16New animated unlockables, four per game
• 4Games in Ranked, Tower of Power included
• v10Tower rules for Ranked Season 1
• 3Discord roles you can earn
• 148Achievements across the arcade

A note on numbers: Lester’s Arcade is in beta while we build, test and evolve everything on the way to mainnet. Every version here is a beta version, and Ranked runs on the LitVM testnet, where zkLTC has no monetary value.

The Locker

Every game now has four hand-built, animated unlockables, and they all live in one place: the Locker, right in the main menu at /locker.

• Live previews. Every unlockable plays in the Locker exactly as it looks in the game, so you know what you’re chasing.
• What it does, and how to get it. Each card says what changes, what unlocks it, and how far along you are.
• Equip in one tap. Pick a look and it follows you into the game.
• Loadout strips. The mode screens for Hard Money Heroes, Chikun’s Escape and STACKED show what you have equipped before you start a run.
• “Unlocked!” moments. When a run earns you something new, the results screen celebrates it with a preview of what you just won.
• Nothing is lost. Earlier looks move to an archive, and you can still equip every one you earned.

Unlockables are looks only. They never change a hitbox, a score or a rule, so a Ranked run is the same contest whatever you wear.

Discord: your record, your roles

Lester’s Arcade has a Discord, and your profile can now talk to it. Link your Discord account from your profile and the arcade’s server grants you Linked Roles for what you have done in Ranked.

• How to link: sign in with your wallet, open your profile, press Connect Discord, then claim your roles from the server’s Linked Roles menu.
• Your wallet stays private. Discord never sees your wallet address, and Free play is never shared.
• Roles keep up. They refresh within a few minutes as your record grows, and the profile card shows your progress toward each one.
• Disconnect any time. The profile asks before it disconnects, and your arcade roles come off when you do.
• Rewards are roles only. Linking costs nothing and pays nothing: it’s bragging rights in the server.

Find the server through Discord community in the footer of every page, including this one.

Around the arcade

• Smoother game switching. Hopping from one game to another now always opens the game you picked. Every screen change closes the cabinet you left, so the arcade runs one game at a time.
• A lighter first paint. The arcade downloads less before it shows you anything, and Back and Forward step through hero select one screen at a time.
• A proverb in the chyron. The scrolling news strip now ends with a random proverb, from the King James Bible or Chinese tradition. The market-data credits moved to the footer.
• Scores and profile polish. The Scores header lines up with its boards, Tower of Power has its own boards and profile section, and your Discord card sits beside your player card on desktop and under it on phones.
• Your picture in the menu. The header chip shows the profile picture you uploaded for the signed-in wallet.
• Fewer dead ends. The arcade boots even when your browser blocks site storage, the Ranked entry window keeps keyboard focus inside it and closes on Escape, and the jukebox button works on Scores and hero select.

Tower of Power: Ranked is open

The tower has a leaderboard. Tower of Power Ranked Season 1 is live, played on rules v10, and it works exactly like every other Ranked game: the same price, the same server checks, the same boards and profiles.

• Same price as every game: 0.012 testnet zkLTC per run, 0.01 entry plus 0.002 to publish your score. How Ranked works has every step.
• Every climb is checked. Your inputs upload in checkpoints while you climb, and the server replays each one. The replay has to reach your floor and score before anything is published.
• Floor-first boards. Tower’s Weekly, Monthly and All-time boards rank your floor first, with Tower’s own headline stats beside it.
• 19 Tower achievements, with trophy art of their own, recorded from your Ranked runs.
• A share card for your climb, drawn on rooftop art.

Rules v10: the fight got smarter

• Dodge-cancel. Whiff a strike and you can cancel into a dodge a moment later.
• Fighters back off. Land three straight hits without a knockdown and most enemies give ground for a step.
• Feints. From floor 10, some boxers throw a fake, then the real strike at another height.
• A living crowd. Fighters waiting their turn shuffle and circle instead of standing still.
• Readable danger. Wind-ups flash blood red, guard stays clear on bright floors, and bosses get a named health bar.

A better-looking tower

• Breakable props modelled in Meshy and painted in the tower’s ink palette.
• A signature backdrop for every floor theme.
• Boss gear that gives each lieutenant a silhouette you can read at a glance.
• Motion-captured movement for walking, idling, reacting and getting back up.
• Camera punch-ins on heavy hits, knockdowns and the last takedown of a floor.
• Today’s tower opens right inside the arcade, along with every other Tower link.
• Kinder on phones: thumb-sized buttons on narrow screens, one hint at a time, and lighter graphics on their own when a device struggles.

Tower’s Free play goals are kept on your device, and the Ranked achievement unlocks the same look on your profile.

Hard Money Heroes

• Two waves of new scenery. Meshy-built ferns, shrubs and flowers dress every district, 35 new props in the second wave alone.
• Ground with character. Districts have their own ground shading, materials blend at their edges, and riverbanks fray into soaked mud at the waterline.
• Mission stagecraft. Sabotage charges, demolitions and mission variants, a field-upgrade crate reward, and survivors who cower, run and catch their breath while you defend them.
• A world that moves. Critters along the bayou and river banks, wind gusts, fire, flickering lamps and windows, and rings where fish break the water.

Fixed:

• Pausing during a level-up offer no longer locks up the picks.
• Your rebound Pause key and a gamepad’s Start button open the run menu.
• Unplugging an idle spare gamepad no longer pauses a keyboard player.
• The ambience fades out when a run ends, and Restart from the pause menu behaves.

Chikun’s Escape

• Two polish rounds. Chikun now moves smoothly between simulation steps, his animations hand over cleanly, and all three jumps were re-animated, with dust at take-off and touchdown.
• A real title screen, mist banks between regions, and a golden hour that keeps its contrast.
• Sound and sparkle. Sixteen newly designed sound cues, thunder for the storms, fireflies, pollen and shooting stars, and idle life on the props along the course.
• See further on phones. Portrait play shows more of the course ahead.
• Ranked results are never lost on a quick exit. Your result is sent on the frame you crash, so exiting or restarting during the crash can’t drop it.
• Input fixes. A second finger can flap, lifting one finger keeps the other gliding, and the results card puts Run Again right under your score on phones.

STACKED

Fixed:

• Escape and P leave Pause and Settings even while a menu button has focus, and Escape on the start screen no longer starts a run.
• If the game hits an error it can’t recover from, the run stops cleanly instead of playing on behind the error.
• In Two players, a claimed gamepad’s Menu button resumes a paused match.

What didn’t change

Free play still needs no wallet and never touches the chain. Hard Money Heroes, Chikun’s Escape and STACKED keep the same Ranked rules and boards they had before this patch, so every past run still counts. Every Ranked run is still checked by the arcade’s server before it’s published, and Ranked still runs on the LitVM testnet, where zkLTC has no monetary value. Unlockables and Discord roles are cosmetic and social only.

Open the Locker

Pick a cabinet and play free