Battle Waves adds friend-to-friend PvP in season two update

Battle Waves: Mobile’s second season, Friends & Foes, finally lets players challenge specific friends instead of relying only on random matchmaking, and that is the update’s real hook. The change turns a clever solo-developed strategy game into something easier to recommend, replay, and obsess over with a regular rival.

The seasonal update adds friend lists and direct PvP invites, plus a new battle pass with free and premium reward tracks. Daily quests can grant up to triple XP, which should make the progression pace feel much less passive for players logging in every day. The season also folds in a Favorite Arena option for PvP, Stackable Hats for unit customization, and Card Chromas, small touches that give the game more personality without distracting from the competitive core.

That focus on social friction matters because Battle Waves has been built as a live game, not a one-off campaign. Gabriel’s Games says the title cleared 175,000 total downloads across iOS and Google Play in its first six weeks, a strong start for a project that Gabriel Langlois spent four years building on his own. The game launched free-to-play on May 29, 2026, and it is available on both the App Store and Google Play as a real-time deckbuilding card battler and auto-battler with ranked PvP, cross-platform PvP, and an endless campaign.

Friends & Foes ran for six weeks, from July 10 through August 21, 2026, giving players a limited window to work through the new battle pass and daily quest path. Google Play listed the app as updated on July 12, 2026 with Season 2: Friends & Foes, so the rollout is already live in the store rather than sitting in preview form.

That makes the big question pretty simple: does direct friend-versus-friend play make Battle Waves stick? For a strategy game, the answer usually comes down to whether one more match feels personal. Random ladder games are fine, but a standing grudge, a rematch, or a friend list challenge is what keeps people coming back. Friends & Foes is betting that a few sharper social hooks will do more for retention than any pile of hats ever could, and this season is built to prove it.