Trial by Fryer Update Has Been Served: New PvP Mode, Restaurants
Scythe Dev Team
Trial by Fryer Update is OUT NOW
We summon you, cultists! It is yet again time to bow the knee at the altar of Joy and undergo a trial by fryer . 🍳🔥
🎥 WATCH THE TRAILER:
📋 Here’s the update menu:
🎮 NEW PVP MODE: "TRIAL BY FRYER"
A team-vs-team cooking race in a brand-new stadium arena. Two kitchens, one crowd, three rounds, and a judge's desk deciding who gets served. ↓
Enter through the new Trial by Fryer hallway in the Lair.
Play solo against an AI kitchen if you're short on friends.
Powerups scattered around the arena in crates. Grab one and the whole stadium reacts: jumbotron close-up, crowd roar, announcer call, camera cut.
Opening cinematic with the cultists and Toe, and Happy and Charlie presiding as judges with their own animations. ↓
Round spinner picks each round's twist, with stingers for round wins and the final result.
Confetti and fireworks for wins and clean serves. ↓
Winner's wall in the stadium with the champions' photos.
Original three-round soundtrack: "Trial by Fryer (Intro)", "Round 1… Fry!", "Round 2… Grill On!", and "Round 3… The Final Chowdown", with tempo-matched transitions so the music never skips a beat between rounds.
Employee of the Weak mode has been retired.
🍽️ 2 NEW RESTAURANTS
🐔Roost ↓
— a chicken joint with a DJ booth and graffiti on every wall. Bird-only menu of 8 new recipes: Scorched Cock, Chiki-Chiki Club, Cow & Chicken, Porky Chick, Pecker Patty, Wing Man, Mayo Clinique, and the Eggless Veggie Omelette.
🐷The Pig Pen ↓
— a farm-barn pork joint with hay bales, feed troughs, hand-painted signs, and its own industrial groove-metal soundtrack. 8 new hog recipes: Big Rig Pig, Hog Garden, Holy Ham, Babe avec Fromage, Troth's Trough, Four Skins, Arterial Assault, and the house monster, the Pigpen Ten.
Both joints unlock in the new later progression tiers (see Progression below).
A third restaurant, Sammy's, is on the way.
👨🍳 CO-WORKERS FOR HIRE
Hire cultist workers in the Lair basement. Crew size scales with your party, and they take a cut of the payout.
They cook, bag, and serve alongside you, and they know their way around every appliance.
They'll chat in text chat, they can jump, and you can shove them out of the way when they're in it.
🦸♂ COSMETICS OVERHAUL
New cosmetic bathroom in the Lair with a rebuilt mirror menu, new camera angles, dimmed lighting for a proper look at yourself, and new UI sounds.
New economy: crack open a jar to reveal a random cosmetic, or spend credits to buy the one you want. Cosmetics now have rarity tiers, and you can try anything on before you commit.
Masks and outfits are now separate — mix any of 76 masks with any of 17 outfits.
Hats are a brand-new slot with 19 to collect.
Coloured aprons — cape roster grows from 13 to 21.
Dozens of new masks, plus the cosmetic contest winners.
Community cosmetics are free for everyone from the start.
Existing saves get any cosmetics they'd already earned but never received.
📈 PROGRESSION
Progression ladder doubled from 12 tiers to 24, with the new restaurants and recipes waiting in the later tiers.
Fixed the jar not advancing for players who'd already saved up past the next tier.
The Backrooms now shows as "???????" on the destination board instead of overriding whichever level you picked.
👹 ENEMIES & AI
Happy is in every restaurant now. She follows you around and doubles as a walking stability meter: the lower it drops, the more corrupted she gets. Below 25%, she stops moving entirely. She'll wander, poke at customers, and drop a voice line every so often — and they get a lot less friendly under 50%. Shove her to send her elsewhere.
Paragon Riot Squad — the Cleaners are back as a four-man riot squad with stun sticks. Three hits and you're on the floor. They show up at 25% stability.
Khyvin demon reworked — no more freezing when you look at it. It creeps, locks eyes with you, charges, and blows up.
The Clopener now grabs a real order off the board instead of conjuring a fake ticket.
Customers got a visual refresh: new hats, new looks, and they actually turn to look at you.
Toe has no reflection. Draw your own conclusions. What does this mean? Is he a vampire?
🕹️ PLAYER
You can jump now , with proper takeoff and landing animations (this feature brought to you by bullying from our community)
Inspect what you're holding : hold the flashlight button to bring it up close, look around to rotate it, hold throw to move it, scroll to zoom.
Head bob is now in step with your footsteps.
8 new voice packs (around 85 new lines): AI Ghost, The Slasher, Simulation Breakdown, Horny, Old McDonald, Classic Happy, AI Glitcher, and Ratburg.
Dying spawns exactly one of you now, and your body no longer stretches into the next zip code.
Text chat moved somewhere less in the way.
🎵 MUSIC & AUDIO
New 'Roost' soundtrack: "Roost 'n' Roll" and "Dirty Bird"
New 'Pig Pen' soundtrack: "Pig Penance", "Table for None", and "Eat from the Trough".
New sound packs and a refresh across the game's audio.
Collectibles are easier to find — they glow, spark, and give off a faint electric hum when you're close. Audio logs sound distinct from tapes.
Audio Log screen rebuilt with a "found X of Y" counter, new look, working scrolling, and full controller support. The VHS shelf also shows your collection count.
🖥️ GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE
Big performance win : the game's core materials were rebuilt from the ground up. Faster frames, faster loads, and shorter first-launch shader compile.
Reflections look far better and cost less, even on low settings. The odd streaky lines in some reflections are gone.
Volumetric fog and light shafts are cleaner and smoother at every quality level.
New Render Scale option replaces the anti-aliasing toggle. Drop the internal resolution to boost framerate without changing your display resolution — 50% at 1080p still looks close to native.
New puddle, oil-slick, and graffiti effects; oil now has that rainbow sheen.
Flickering decals and signage fixed at every render scale.
Grass, cornstalks, and other vegetation now cast shadows. Festival runs noticeably better.
Smoother lighting with less banding on lower settings, and lower VRAM usage overall.
Fresh lighting passes on Bugungas, Festival, and the Lair (including the new rooms).
🤝 ACCESSIBILITY & OPTIONS
Skip Intro option in the main menu and options.
Reduce Motion now also calms down the pulsing meat on the main menu.
Lobby code is hidden by default — hit the eye button to reveal it. Copying it now confirms on screen.
The server browser shows a loading screen instead of hanging.
🌍 LOCALIZATION
Vietnamese is now fully supported, our 15th language.
Every new string in this update is localized in all supported languages.
🛠️ BUG FIXES
Controls not responding in some builds.
Errors when loading into the Lair.
Grainy screen during loading, and loading screens that briefly went black.
Flickering decals in Bugungas and Roost.
Getting stuck on geometry in Roost and Pig Pen; hay bales you could walk through.
Missing or wrong shadows on some props; glowing objects now glow the right color.
The gumball machine is see-through again.
Toe standing in the wrong spot in the Lair.
Lobbies wrongly rejecting players, plus assorted connection fixes.
Assorted sandwich, recipe, and texture fixes.
Join our Discord to chat with the devs, share feedback, and find other burger cultists to play with.
This announcement was originally published by Scythe Dev Team on Steam on Sep 14, 2026.
Open the original on Steam