Patch 1.0.3 22 September 2026 Build 25431174 Patch Notes 1.0.3 It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since we welcomed players to Haddonfield with the official launch of Halloween: The Game. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who’s jumped into our asymmetrical horror sandbox so far, and our team continues to work tirelessly to refine the experience for our players. As we discussed in our What’s Coming Next? post last week, thanks to your thoughtful feedback, our team has identified and prioritized a list of pain points to tackle. In today’s 1.0.3 patch, we are very excited to address many of these issues by introducing a host of bug and crash fixes, balance adjustments, and gameplay improvements. Balance Adjustments As we continue to play, monitor, and gather feedback, we’ve identified some balance adjustments we felt were necessary for this patch. Many of these changes are being rolled out to minimize frustrating, overpowered, or unenjoyable situations. While we are happy to implement the following changes, we have also identified additional balance opportunities we plan to release with future updates. Your passionate feedback has been greatly beneficial to the team and we are eager to continue improving Halloween: The Game. Civilian Melee Rebalance We performed a Civilian-focused melee rebalance to eliminate easy one-shot Michael downs, especially when using Bob and Laurie or Perks that give a boost while Drunk. This also included buffing Michael’s Bloodthirst Damage Resistance to extend the duration of melee encounters. We want Civilians to be capable of fighting back against Michael, but we recognized that certain characters could inflict extremely high damage far too consistently. Reduced effectiveness of Capability for Melee Damage at higher stat values Increased effectiveness of Capability for Melee Damage at lower stat values Reduced Fear Resistance granted by the Heavyweight trait Reduced Melee Damage granted by the Heavyweight trait Reduced effect of Civilian melee damage boost while Drunk Increased Michael’s damage resistance across all Bloodthirst levels Downed Michael While there were already mechanics in place to bolster Michael after he recovers from being Downed, we’re adding additional buffs in this patch to combat harassment and avoid instant follow-up downs. This, combined with the above melee rebalancing, addresses the ease in which these occurrences could happen and ensures Michael always has ample means of retaliation if he is being surrounded or consistently pressured by an aggressive squad. Michael now gains a short duration buff after getting up from a Downed state. This buff grants Michael Stagger immunity and an increase in Damage Resistance, Melee Damage, and Melee Attack Speed for the duration of the buff. Michael will also be empowered with increased Health Regeneration and Daze Resistance for a short period of time after getting up from a Downed state Weapon Power Tuning To provide more time for players to react to incoming hits we are introducing a small damage reduction and a small increase to time in between all attack combos for Wood Axes and Pickaxes. We don’t want to discourage melee combat and would prefer to provide players additional opportunities to counter. Civilians should now have more time to shove during melee combos to interrupt Michael and experience increased cooldown time between stumbles. We are also adjusting the available quantities of certain weapon types on maps to increase their rarity and further incentivize exploration. Reduced Combo Attack Speed for the Wood Axe and Pick-Axe Reduced light and heavy Attack Damage for the Wood Axe and Pick-Axe Lowered amount of heavy Melee Weapons, Rifles, and Shotguns spawns across all maps and locations Increased the Stagger cooldowns for Civilians Reduced overall Melee Weapon Durability Scoring Adjustments We are taking some steps to balance the value of Special Targets and Residents to ensure match scoring better represents the overall outcome and creates greater opportunities for mid-to-late game swings. We have lowered the score values for killing Special Targets, while increasing the score values for both saving and killing Residents. While we plan to improve Special Target spawning, tracking, and more with future updates, these changes will make every Resident, Civilian, and Special Target feel important to the final score. Made adjustments to scoring to balance Michael’s priority on normal Residents vs Special Targets Grabs and Pocket Knives We are continuing to monitor the balance of Grabs and Struggling. In previous patches, we made it easier for Civilians to struggle free from Grabs at lower Stalk Tiers. In today’s patch we have made adjustments to further reduce the difficulty of escaping Grabs. We also lowered the force caused by failed Grab attempts so Civilian players won't stumble as dramatically, allowing a better chance to slip away. Our team is having ongoing conversations about pocket knives and we plan to provide more substantial tuning in the future, but for now we have increased the pocket knife minigame difficulty to allow Michael players slightly more time to pull off Context Executions. Reduced impact force from failed Grab attempts on the Civilian player Civilians now have an easier time Struggling free from grabs at Stalk Tiers 0-2 Reduced effectiveness of Capability for Grab Struggle at higher stat values Slight increase to the difficulty of the Pocket Knife break free minigame Civilian Speed We’ve adjusted the effectiveness of Athleticism for movement and sprint speeds to reduce the speed of high Athleticism Civilians while also increasing the speed of low Athleticism Civilians. We noticed that certain Civilians were far too fast in their running and sprint speeds. Reduced effectiveness of Athleticism for movement and sprint speeds at higher stat values Increased effectiveness of Athleticism for movement and sprint speeds at lower stat values Challenge Adjustments We understand that challenges and their associated rewards are extremely important to players. We have and will continue to address fundamental issues impacting challenge progression and tune challenge requirements. Our latest patch brings a handful of corrections to challenge tracking along with a sweeping balance pass on Progressive Challenge goals. Players with progress exceeding the required goals for Progressive Challenges after our updates simply need to gain any progress toward that objective to complete the challenge. The full list of Challenge adjustments can be found at the bottom of the Patch Notes General Various Crash Fixes and Optimization Improvements All Passive Challenges will now continue to gain progress after Prestiging This is a temporary fix and we are working to fix the issue where Prestiging will cause your Passive Challenges to appear as locked Fixed an issue where the Host of the Private Match was unable to unlock trophies/achievements Civilians Reduced difficulty for completing any Challenges that require the player to knock Michael off his feet Reduced difficulty for completing any Challenges that require the player to blind, disorient, or stun Michael Increased damage of the Shotgun at close ranges Fixed several issues that were causing players to be executed even after appearing to have Struggling free from the Grab Fixed an issue where Bolt Cutters were not able to open containers if the Bolt Cutters had low durability Fixed an issue where using emotes could allow the player to cancel animations Fixed an issue where the player could lose the ability to move after breaking free from a grab Fixed an issue where the player could lose the ability to move after attempting to enter a vehicle/ride a bicycle while being grabbed Fixed an issue where the Wood Axe would lose way more durability than intended Killer Made adjustments to the Shape Mine animation so that placing a mine no longer completely stops Michael’s movement Fixed an issue where Shape Jump could become stuck on cooldown for the rest of the match Fixed an issue where Killer Sense could become stuck on cooldown for the rest of the match Fixed an issue where the Michael could collide with the Police Wagon while in Shape Jump Maps Fixed an issue that was preventing Michael from reaching Civilians on the merry-go-round in Orange Grove Estates www.Downloadha.com