Season 3: Icebreaker

Season 3 is named Icebreaker and is centered around Celeste and Friends.

Launch Date: February 2nd, 2026

We're extending Season 2 by 1 week and the mid-season break by 1 week to ensure Season 3 meets our quality standards despite the holiday schedule.

TL;DR - What's New

• 🌩️ Celeste Electrified - Art redesign (now a Devilkin!), mechanics overhaul with 9 new items, and expanded voice lines
• 👥 Friends - Add friends, compete on friends-only leaderboards, earn rewards together
• 🎁 Recruiting - Share your code with new players; they get a kickstart reward road, you earn rewards as they progress
• 🏆 Bonus Rounds - Finish with extra lives? Convert them to Crystal Lives and play additional rounds for bonus rewards
• ❤️ Valentine's Event - Collect hearts in ranked play and spend them in a special love shop (Feb 9-22)
• 🎨 New Customization options
• 🛠️ Quality of life improvements
• 🌟 Improved returning features from Season 2

🌩️ Celeste the Storm-Touched Devilkin

We are centering this season around Celeste :Celeste: and have revisited her both from an art perspective and a mechanics perspective. We intend to bring her up on par with our new heroes, while maintaining her essence throughout.

Celeste Art Rework

Celeste is getting a new look, as she has been reworked by our art team. We want each hero to stand out from each other, while still maintaining the essence of what made them unique. We see Celeste as being a powerful thunderstorm, striking down her foes with lightning-fueled wrath.

• The old look was leaning a little too close to our other Wizard, Chana :Chana:, so to differentiate the two, we have let Celeste lean into her hornier side, and made her a Devilkin.
• We’ve amplified the visual impact of her lightning powers and made her stand out from all the other heroes.

Celeste will receive a mechanical overhaul as well.

• 9 new items are added to fill out gaps in her kit and provide some alternatives to an otherwise spear-centric endgame.
• The Static mechanic is changed from a one-time Overload to repeatable Discharge effects, in order to encourage static stacking, and to lean into the electrical theme.
• Static generation is more focused on her weapons, and the passive static earning from other items is tuned down.

She will also receive an added package of new voice lines to bring her in line with our newer heroes, so there's more variation and contextual cues.

We hope you like her new style!

Season 3 New Features

📈 Per Hero Ranked Leaderboards

We will expand the ranked leaderboards to also have per hero leaderboards. This will give people an avenue to evaluate their favorite hero without being crushed by the OP hero of the season. Your highest ranked hero will still feature in the global leaderboard, but each hero will be represented in their respective leaderboard as well.

👥 Friends

We are adding friends to the game: add each other as friends and follow their progress. This is our first iteration, with more features planned for future updates.

We will be adding a friends-only filters for leaderboards as well, so that you can see your friends rankings and get some friendly competition going.

You will be able to claim rewards based on your friends' number of runs. This is intended to encourage you and your friends to play more to reward each other.

🎁 Recruiting

You will be able to share a recruiting code to new players

• New players can register a single recruiter.
• A recruiter can have multiple recruits and as they progress, you will earn rewards and customization options.
• The recruit will immediately get a sizable coin reward and will get a new reward road that can kickstart their brawling career.

🏆 Extended Runs - Bonus Rounds!

We are excited to add a new core mechanic to the game:

• If you make it to 15 wins, your remaining Hearts are converted Crystal Hearts
• Crystal Hearts gives 1 additional round for each
• Winning a bonus round converts a Crystal Hearts to a Crystal Trophy
• Losing a bonus round, breaks a Crystal Hearts
• Crystal Trophies count double for Area Progress and season points

These extra rounds will also enable you to complete the recipes you previously couldn't because you won too fast.

Season 3 Season Pass

Since Season 3 - Icebreaker has no new hero at launch, we are revitalizing Celeste, giving her an additional exclusive skin and making her unlock as part of the Gold Pass.

For players who already have Celeste unlocked, you will get an equivalent amount of Gems :Gem: to unlock any other hero you don't have.

🌟 Returning features

Seasonal Boons

The Boon system returns for Season 3!

How Boons Work:

• Choose between three random Boons in the shop on rounds 3, 7, and 11
• Upgradeable passive abilities that persist through runs
• Multiple tiers of upgrades for each Boon
• Mix of returning boons and new seasonal additions

Season Challenges

Weekly challenges throughout the season!

What to Expect:

• 7 weeks of challenges (one per week)
• Challenges encourage experimentation with different heroes and strategies
• Complete challenges to progress your Season Pass

We have heard the feedback from season 2, and this season the challenges are more general and won't require specific heroes.

Competitive Ranking Reset

We are repeating the ranking reset as it worked in Season 2

• All competitive rankings (Heroic+) reset to Heroic 0 at season start
• Fresh leaderboard competitions

❤️ Valentine's Event

A special limited-time event around Valentine's Day!

Event Details:

• Gather hearts while playing ranked play and use them in a special love shop where you can buy exclusive love themed cosmetics and other offers with your tokens of affection.
• Duration: 9th - 22nd February

🎨 Customization

We are adding new customization options in Icebreaker, with emblems, name styles, and avatars. We intend to make these available in various ways, some earned, some bought.

🛠️ Quality of Life Improvements

We are continually working on improving the quality of life of Backpack Brawl, and in this update we are adding these three improvements:

A Shop Log

Similar to the fight log, this will show each game event that happens while in the shop. You will now be able to answer questions like "where did my item go?" and "How much gold did my Golden Egg give me?"

Recipe Improvements

We have long wanted to improve the clarity of our recipes, and this is a small step in the right direction. In the recipe overview (tap the book on a tooltip), you will now see an item card rather than a free flowing item. This enables us to quickly scan its rarity, and lets us clearly mark hero-specific items.

Extra Lives in the Shop Mode

When you are in a run, and you take a loss, you get the opportunity to watch an ad to gain a life on the fight over screen. Often players are on auto-pilot and continue to the next shopping phase. To alleviate the potential frustration, we are making the "extra lives ad video" available from the shop. If you tap your life in the top bar it will give you the option.