The Button: Season 4 Full Recap

Before we jump in, I just want to say thank you to every single person who came along and played a very silly button clicking game.

Special thanks to @[email protected] for helping me with early testing too!

If there's any other stats you want to see, please let me know in the comments!

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• Theme: Fishing / The Harbour
• Button went live: 24 July 2026, 19:00 UTC
• Season ended: 27 July 2026, 07:42:09 UTC
• Button-game length: 60 hours, 42 minutes
• Registered players: 158 across 42 instances
• Winner: 🦀 Crab Crew (Red) with 49.7% of all timer control

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How Season 4 actually ended

Not on a quiet timer. Season 4 was killed on purpose, in 81 seconds.

At 07:40:47 a Leviathan slipped back into the deep, the fourth escape in a row, and battered the button for another 100 health. That was the last of it. One second later the fifth Corrupted Heart of the season fired: two hours on the doom clock, a cleansing price of 600 health worth of fish, and the rule everyone had learned the hard way, that every press of the button steals 30 seconds off the clock and drags the port closer to the end.

Seven players took that as an invitation.

Between 07:40:48 and 07:42:10, they threw 242 presses into the dark. 241 of them were banked bonus presses, hoarded over days of faction press drops and monster kills and finally spent all at once. Two hours of doom clock burned away in a minute and twenty-one seconds.

suborange, mid-execution, in #main: "All of the sudden I decided to go vegan." And then: "No more fishing for me!"

The last press belonged to @[email protected]. The clock hit zero at 07:42:10.

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Faction standings

Control is measured by how long each crew held the timer - Red pressed the most and held the most.

Presses per active presser: Red 147.0, Green 85.9, Blue 48.6, Purple 24.9.

Blue had the biggest roster and the second-most control with the third-fewest presses per head, which is the most efficient conversion of the season. Red simply out-pressed everyone by a factor of three.

Unspent presses at the buzzer, by crew: Red 4,957, Green 2,632, Blue 1,695, Purple 1,461. Across the whole port, 12,589 banked bonus presses were still sitting unused when the season ended, spread across 157 players. Red's stockpile alone could have held the timer for another ten hours.

Crew contributions elsewhere

Red won the Tide as well: the most button health restored of any crew.

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The Button

Top 15 pressers

Button records

• First press of the season: @[email protected], at 19:00:06 on 24 July. Six seconds after the button went live.
• Fastest reaction: @[email protected], 5 milliseconds after a reset.
• Closest save: @[email protected] at 06:49:43 on 27 July, with 1.095 seconds left on the clock. Runner-up: @[email protected] with 1.692 seconds, and again with 3.381 seconds. @[email protected] pulled two saves under 2.4 seconds inside 41 minutes on the 26th.
• Last press: @[email protected], timer at zero.
• Median press: with 886.9 seconds still on the clock, meaning the typical press was a comfortable one and the drama lived in the tails.

When the port pressed

Busiest hours (UTC): 21:00 (946 presses), 20:00 (844), 19:00 (780). Quietest: 09:00 (74). European evening was prime time, and the 04:00 and 06:00 spikes are the overnight rescue crew keeping the lights on.

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Fishing

73,154 catches. 402.3 tonnes of fish. 115 anglers.

70,905 fish were sold. 2,249 were still in someone's bucket at the end.

Top 15 anglers

The big one

🦣 The Behemoth, 272.398 kg, landed by @[email protected] at 06:55 on the final morning. It stood as the season record for 47 minutes before the world ended.

The top ten heaviest catches of the season were all Behemoths, running from 272.4 kg down to 249.3 kg. alfredolin and terrance both appear twice.

Species records

Every species record holder, by weight:

The Dex

@[email protected] was the first player in the harbour's history to complete the Fishing Dex, at 04:09 on 25 July, roughly nine hours into the button game. 34 players eventually filled all 40 species. Another 9 finished on 39, one species short.

The rarest thing in the game was not a fish. It was patience.

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Gold and the shop

476,701 gold passed through the shop. 79,591 gold was still in pockets at the end.

The single most expensive purchase of the season was a harpoon upgrade at 3,200 gold.

Faction press drops by crew: Red 269, Green 141, Blue 77, Purple 61. This is the direct explanation for Red's press dominance and for the 12,589 presses left unspent: Red bought so many drops that its quiet members ended the season sitting on 245 presses each without ever clicking anything.

Richest at the buzzer

Biggest spenders

macallan (26,347), yetanotheruser (25,320), almost1337 (23,339), alfredolin (22,857), sebas (22,313), deebster (19,499), tikiporch (19,027), w3dd1e (18,892).

Highest harpoon level reached: 20, by @[email protected] and @[email protected]. 65 players never upgraded past level 1.

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Sea monsters

63 encounters. 29 slain. 33 escaped. 1 bought off. 75,082 harpoon strikes. 5,016,157 total damage.

Most damage dealt

Killing blows

Four players tied on 3 kills each: @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] and @[email protected]. alfredolin and pokeman took 2 apiece. Thirteen more players landed one.

Hardest kill: the Avenging Armada, 3,000,000 HP, finished by @[email protected]. Biggest single strike: 165 damage by @[email protected]. Critical strikes: only 32 in the entire season, for 1,958 damage. Crits unlocked with the Grand Bazaar's second milestone, and every last one of them landed between 07:30:52 and 07:40:24 on the final morning, on a Leviathan that escaped anyway, four minutes before the world ended.

Monster HP scaled with the kill streak, and the port's success ate it alive. The first megalodon of the game had 700 HP. The last had 96,159. By the 26th the harbour was losing more monsters than it landed, and each escape smashed the button's health, which is exactly how the Corrupted Heart kept coming back.

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The Blockade trilogy

Part 1: The Pirate Flagship (25 July, 19:51 UTC)

1,000,000 HP, and a ransom option at 20,000 gold. The port took one look at the hull and reached for its wallet.

The Town Council emptied its coffers eight times over, 2,500 gold a motion, and the bay reopened at 20:25, thirty-four minutes after the sails appeared. Total paid: 20,870 gold, of which 20,000 came from the council war chest and 870 from individual pockets. @[email protected] gave the most and drove the whole operation.

Part 2: The Flagship Returns (26 July, 11:35 UTC)

"The captain counted your last ransom and liked the weight of it." Same 1,000,000 HP, ransom raised to 50,000 gold. Not one coin was paid.

The council went to war instead: powder kegs for 5,000 instant damage, boarding parties dropping harpoon cooldown to one second, grapeshot for +50% damage, privateer's bounty paying 2 gold a strike. 40 minutes and 43 seconds later the flagship was on the seabed. @[email protected] struck the killing blow. 27 hunters split the pot.

Part 3: The Avenging Armada (26 July, 21:43 UTC)

"You killed their captain, and the whole fleet has come to collect."

3,000,000 HP. A four-hour clock. A ransom priced at 200,000 gold, which was never a real offer. And a new mechanic: every minute the armada lived, it stole presses from the port's biggest hoarders. Failure meant losing every bonus press, every coin of gold and every scrap in the harbour.

The port paid 570 gold in gestures at a 200,000 gold ransom, laughed, and then killed it in 1 hour 43 minutes, well inside the clock. @[email protected] landed the final harpoon. The armada dragged 515 presses to the bottom with it on the way down.

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The Corrupted Heart

Five times the button's health hit zero. Five times the heart turned black and started a two-hour countdown, with every press stealing another 30 seconds and only fish able to break the curse. The price went up each time.

The second cleanse is the single most impressive thing the port did all season: 300 health worth of fish poured into the dark in sixty-one seconds. Across the season the harbour healed 211 hearts' worth of corruption.

The button's health chart tells the story of the last two days: comfortable in the 180s and 190s on the 24th, sagging through the 25th, and from the 26th onward a sawtooth between 0 and 80 as the monsters escaped faster than the fish could come in.

Peak concurrent players: 45, hit twice: on the afternoon of 25 July and again on the evening of the 26th.

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Mega-projects

Three harbour-wide builds, all three completed, each one faster than the last.

The Lighthouse and Drydock were community efforts: 43 and 38 donors, 89,123 gold and 26,092 scrap between them.

The Grand Bazaar was something else entirely. Eight donors. Two of them, @[email protected] (198 presses) and @[email protected] (150 presses), dumped 348 banked presses into it for 348,000 of the 400,000 points needed. A project designed to take a day was finished before breakfast.

Top donors

Lighthouse: yetanotheruser (13,940), tarball (13,437), alfredolin (12,736), sebas (12,535), bobtimus_prime (7,600), deebster (7,600), lnxtx (7,170), dunstabzugshaubitze (5,948).

Drydock: yetanotheruser (30,000), svc (20,470), macallan (19,649), sebas (16,540), rajtinka (16,477), cooperredarmydog (15,121), alfredolin (9,705), m_f (9,123).

Bazaar: simpliston (198,399), patrickyaa (152,362), fleece (16,477), bobtimus_prime (12,854), freeman (9,525), svc (6,650), demigodrick (2,813), deebster (1,000).

@[email protected] topped both of the projects that were open to everyone. The season's most consistent public servant.

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The Town Council

21 terms. 94 seats filled. 461 motions. 407 passed. An 88% pass rate, which is either admirable consensus or a rubber stamp, depending on which crew you asked.

Most seats served

sebas held a seat for ten of the season's twenty-one councils, and nobody else broke five.

Most motions proposed

almost1337 went 24 for 24. Not a single failed motion all season.

Most-used powers

High Tide passed 167 times (and failed 15). Brown Envelope 87. Fishmonger's Sale 48. Lucky Tides 34. Scrap Rain 17. The war powers only came out when pirates were in the bay: Boarding Party 14, Grapeshot 14, War Chest 8, Privateer's Bounty 6, Powder Kegs 2.

14,515 faction points were spent on passed motions. 1,285 council tithes were paid, at a cost of 71,945 gold.

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Voyages and the Galleon

1,537 voyages launched. 34,743 fish landed at sea. 131,026 gold hauled home. 33 ships were still out on the water when the season ended, and they are still out there.

Voyage-only species dominated the catch log. The Beacon Tuna (4,491), Pearl Diver (4,462) and Lighthouse Eel (3,686) were the three most-caught fish of the entire season, and none of them can be caught from the dock.

1,551 voyage events fired at sea. 1,374 were answered by a captain; 177 were left to resolve themselves while nobody was looking. The port's instinct, when the sea offered a choice, was overwhelmingly to take the cautious option. The two exceptions were Kraken Shallows (83 chose to sneak past versus 46 who fought) and Rogue Wave (68 chose to ride it out versus 35 who turned into it).

Shipwrights

68 players built a full boat in the workshop. 25 went further and assembled all five Masterwork Parts found at sea to earn the ⚓ Master Ship Builder badge.

First five to launch a Masterwork Galleon:

1. @[email protected], 25 July 06:54
2. @[email protected], 25 July 14:54
3. @[email protected], 25 July 17:18
4. @[email protected], 25 July 17:34
5. @[email protected], 25 July 18:25

Only 179 Masterwork Parts were ever pulled out of the sea, across 1,537 voyages.

Most voyages: deebster (79), sebas (77), yetanotheruser (71), alfredolin (64), macallan (51).

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The Bounty Board

238 bounties taken, 197 completed, 54,980 gold paid out. An 83% completion rate.

The board's most-taken contract was Sell Gold (68 picks). The best-paying was Monster Damage: 35 picks, 14,080 gold. Every single Rares, Legendaries and RPS Wins bounty taken was completed.

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The Atlas Chain

The season's twelve-step puzzle, running from a morse-code message to a moral choice at a lighthouse.

20 players finished it. 54 more started and stopped at step 1.

@[email protected] won the Lantern's Hour, relighting the Forgotten Tide beacon at 22:17:02 on 24 July, three hours and seventeen minutes after the season began.

First three finishers, all within six minutes of each other:

1. @[email protected], 22:19:16
2. @[email protected], 22:21:00
3. @[email protected], 22:25:37

The final choice

At the end, each solver chose whether to keep the lantern or relight the beacon for whoever came next.

Keep it: 12. alfredolin, almost1337, egrets, gerudo, lnxtx, m_f, owenfromcanada, rumba, simpliston, terrance, treasure, yetanotheruser.

Relight it: 8. bevsdad, deebster, dunstabzugshaubitze, freeman, patrickyaa, pokeman, snoopy, w3dd1e.

The first player to finish the chain gave the light away. Make of that what you will.

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Chat and the social side

8,613 messages from players, across 12 channels. The harbour feed carried another 17,000 system shouts on top.

Most talkative

Most-used reaction

🐦‍⬛ with 844 uses, beating 🎉 (816) and 👍 (452). The Corvid got more love than actual celebration did.

Season 4: Rock Paper Scissors

221 games. 636 rounds. 38 players with at least one win. First game 24 July 13:28 UTC, last 27 July 06:42 UTC.

Only the deciding round of each game is recorded, so the 442 throws below come from the 221 decisive rounds. The other 415 rounds were draws, and drawn hands leave no trace.

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Which hand actually won

The three hands were thrown almost exactly equally, and it still was not a fair fight. Rock lost more games than it won. Paper picked up the difference. The oldest advice in the game turns out to be correct: people reach for rock, so throw paper.

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Player records

Everyone with five or more games.

snoopy went nine games without a single win, the only completely blank record of the season. They favoured paper, the best hand in the game, and it never once landed.

Best record with real volume: yetanotheruser, 21-9 at 70%. Best record overall: patrickyaa, 9-2 at 82%.

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The Standoff

yetanotheruser vs its_prolly_fine, 26 July at 02:49 UTC: 255 consecutive draws.

Two hundred and fifty six rounds. Two players throwing the same hand, over and over, neither willing to be the one who changed. It ended when scissors finally cut paper.

The next longest standoff of the entire season was 29 draws.

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The predictable

Two players never varied. Not once.

And the nearly as readable:

sebas is the exception that proves the rule. Being 88% predictable did not matter, because the hand he kept throwing was the one that beats all the rock-throwers. He finished 10-6.

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Rivalries

Busiest players

Banner buyers

143 harbour banners were bought. @[email protected] alone paid for 35 of them, a quarter of everything that scrolled across the top of the screen all season.

Recruiters

@[email protected] brought 6 new players to the port, the most of anyone. dunstabzugshaubitze, snoopy and freeman brought 3 each. 23 players joined through a referral link.

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Achievements - The full list

Only 🏁 and ⚡ move between players. Everything else, once earned, is yours.

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Who holds what after Season 4

Solo honours

🛡️ Last-Second Save (7)

🕯️ Lantern Keeper (12)

⚓ Master Ship Builder (25)

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Most decorated

alfredolin and terrance finished the season with three each. alfredolin is the only player to hold 🏮, which cannot be shared.

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Odds, ends and honourable mentions

• @[email protected] finished the Dex first, built the first Masterwork Galleon, and tied for the most monster kills. A quietly outrageous season.
• @[email protected] finished top of catches, top of legendaries, top of chat, top of council motions, top donor on two of three mega-projects, second in RPS and second in total damage, and finished fourth in the faction standings for their trouble.
• @[email protected] ended the season richest at 12,063 gold. Then spent his last minute on Earth throwing 23 presses into the doom clock.
• 73,154 fish, and the largest was a 154 kg Behemoth caught by terrance at 07:38 on the last morning, during the two-minute window where nothing could save anyone.
• 12,589 banked presses went to the grave unspent. Half of them were Red's.

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See you in Season 5. 🎣