BoomTown is updated often. Here is what has changed recently — new features, rule fixes and improvements, newest first.
Public website: signed-out visitors to boomtowngame.com now see what BoomTown is instead of a bare login screen, and anyone can read the rules (/guide), browse every card (/cards) and see recent updates (/news) without an account — with a page description, sitemap and robots.txt so search engines and AdSense can read the site.
City market fix: when the City opens, its five cards are revealed one at a time by a player's device — and if that device was closed or lost its connection part-way, the market stayed short for the rest of the game (one card in the reported game). It now tops itself back up to five at the start of the next roll, in games already in progress too.
Buying: if your device's copy of the game has fallen behind (a missed update on a slow connection), tapping a card used to do nothing at all. It now says it is catching up and reloads the game, so the next tap works.
Less lag in games: a leftover copy of the Frontier deck from the draft (about a quarter of every game's saved state) was being saved and sent to every player on every move for the rest of the game. It is now dropped once the board is set up — games already in progress shed it on their next move.
Notifications can be cleared: swipe one away on a phone, or hover over it on a computer and press the delete button — or use Clear all. Recent activity (likes, accolades, friends who joined) is deleted for good; clearing a game invite or friend request only hides it — it never declines it.
Game log: when your Hydro Dam pays out, it is now its own line — “gained N coins from the Hydro Dam” — listing whose card each coin was taken from (“Bob's Grain Silo”). It used to be merged into your roll's payout, so a roll could read “gained 29: Grain Silo, Theatre, Settlement…” as if cards that don't match the roll had activated. The coins themselves were right; only the log was misleading.
Page Editor and the Modal Editor's large designer: the app's top bar covered their toolbars, hiding the page and game pickers. They now open above the bar (and still below picture pickers and other pop-ups).
Page Editor: opening a game screen on a phone could crash Safari (“A problem repeatedly occurred”) — the editor runs a second copy of the app, and two whole apps were too much. The copy inside the editor now runs light: no sound, card-art warm-up, live sync, animations, offline download or background jobs, and on a phone the editor starts on the Mobile size.
Fix: “games that include me” lookups now work. The app's database layer had no way to ask for that, so every place that did came back empty — Deep Dive Stats' games (since 2.35.0), the Page Editor's game picker, the card library's game scan and the default-avatar fallback. All four find their rows again, online and offline.
The footed “1” is gone for good. iPhones kept drawing Rubik's fixed-width 1 (the one with a base) on card numbers, deck counts, the bank and the Elo, whatever the styling said. The app now ships its own copy of Rubik in which that 1 is redrawn as the plain 1, so it cannot appear anywhere, on any device.
One “1” everywhere. Rubik has two: the plain 1 (as in 715) and a fixed-width 1 with a foot along the bottom, which appeared wherever numbers were set to line up in columns — the Elo pill, timers, scores and stats. Fixed-width digits are now off across the whole app, so every 1 is the plain one.
Modal Editor on phones: the Edit button no longer slides off the right edge (a long description pushed it out), and the large designer and the Page Editor put their controls under the preview instead of in a column beside it.
Fix: the app stopped after the loading screen with “BoomTown hit a snag” (Cannot access before initialization). The faster Challenges banner set up its saved-state helpers before the state they write to; they now come after it.
Page Editor (Admin → Game Content → Page Editor): edit Home, the game lobby, public games, create game, Story Mode, both profiles, Social, Achievements, the Store, Deep Dive Stats, the Guide, the top bar and every in-game screen (waiting room, character select, drafting, the board and story chapters, the score screen) the way windows are edited in the Modal Editor — click any part, pick its layer or the box around it, drag it, scale, rotate, restyle, reword or hide it, and add text, pictures, icons and shapes. The real app is shown at true phone and desktop widths, with separate phone edits, and “Use the page” lets you open a tab or menu before editing inside it.
Faster screens. Challenges: its data loads side by side instead of one piece after another, a second open is instant, and progress shows without waiting on a reward claim. Your profile and Deep Dive Stats open straight away, and their data is fetched quietly in the background after you sign in. Deep Dive now asks the server for only your finished games instead of the latest 500 of every kind. Another player's profile starts loading as soon as you hover over (or touch) their name.
Private messages: tap Message on any player's profile to write to them. They get it live wherever they are in the app, with a notice, and the chat icon appears in the top bar with a count only while there are unread private messages — otherwise it stays hidden. The messages window is in the Modal Editor (Private Messages).
Player card: the shape behind any element (like the pill behind the Gold Bars) is its own layer — fade it, recolour it, change its shape, make it wider or taller, nudge it, scale it or remove it. Windows: a content area keeps the content inside part of the background (for a picture with artwork round its edges), and a background picture can now be stretched to keep the whole picture instead of cropped.
Rubik is now the font everywhere — story chapters, sign-in screens and banners included — and it can be picked in every font list (the player card editor was missing it). Modal Editor: button width and height take plain numbers as pixels; overlays (colour, gradient or picture) on any part or its border; one-click No border, Square corners, No background and No shadow; the whole window has frame controls (remove the frame, square corners, width, style, colour) and its own look settings; and the preview stays on the left while the options scroll on the right, with a Save button under it.
Admin: the Modal Editor has a large designer. Click any part of a window and pick the exact layer under the pointer (or the box around it), drag anything to move it, scale and rotate it, add your own text, pictures, icons and shapes, hide or delete things, and drag the whole window into place — separately for desktop and phones. The preview inside each row is bigger too, size limits are much wider, and the player card is now in the Modal Editor.
Jail fixed: a roll of 7 is now guilty, as it should be — anything from 7 to 12 pays the owner and skips a turn (it used to need 8 or more). Admins: in the Modal Editor you can now click ANY part of a window in the preview — a background, a box, a line of text, an icon — and change its words, colours, border, font and spacing, or hide it; lines made of pieces (a name and fixed words) let you change the fixed words and keep the name.
The Frontier deck’s Urbanization card is now shuffled into the bottom half of the deck after the draft, instead of anywhere in it, so the next phase no longer arrives too soon.
Leaderboard accolades: a ribbon for each of the top 3 places on every leaderboard — High Score, Most Wins, Games Played, Win Rate, Win Margin, Win Streak, Foundations Win % and Elo. Hold the place to keep it: when someone takes it, the accolade passes to them and you are told who dethroned you.
Fixed: town achievements (and referral rewards) were only ever awarded to admins. For everyone else the server refused the XP part of the reward and threw the whole award away. Every achievement players have earned since the switch-over is awarded the next time they open the app.
Your player card now shows your Elo rating, and admins can redesign the whole card (every element: shown or hidden, position, size, font, colours, border, icon) with a live preview. The profile opens with your player card and your winner card side by side — change your winner-card background and brag text right there — followed by a compact account strip, Level & Tier folded away, a much fuller but tighter Player Statistics section, and Notifications trimmed to the settings that actually work. Accolades can now be earned by reaching a player level.
Your custom icons now show offline (status bar, top bar, home card) instead of the fallbacks. The colour guide — resolution order and what each colour does — is one shared guide in the Rules page and the in-game help, and admins can edit it from the guide. Market refills now animate in draw order: a duplicate drawn first stacks onto its copy before the card that fills the gap flies in. A 4th copy drawn sends the whole stack of four to the scrap pile (it used to vanish), and a new unique card fills the gap.
Finer hand-size buttons (and hold them to keep resizing); and more artwork now works offline — leaderboard tiles, player card backgrounds, sprites, seasonal art, icons and backgrounds, including in the phone app.
Quick Settings now shows how much of the game is downloaded for offline play, with a bar and a "Ready to play offline" message when it’s all there; going offline before then brings a heads-up — and lobby dev cards, expansion pictures, deck backs and board backgrounds now show offline.
The game’s fonts are now kept on your device too, so the website looks the same with no signal.
All the game’s artwork, music and sound effects now download to your device in the background whenever you open the app with a signal, so nothing is missing offline — and Ready (and the rest of the lobby) now works with no signal in a game against the AI.
Cards flying into your hand now slide in under the cards to their right and over the ones to their left, tucking into place instead of passing over the whole hand.
No daily game limit while offline — with no signal you can start as many games against the AI as you like, and they are all saved to your account when you reconnect.
Games against the AI now play from your device — every move saves instantly with or without signal, Quick Play and "play again" work offline, and XP, stats and challenges earned offline show straight away and are confirmed by the server automatically when you reconnect.
The game now opens and stays signed in with no signal — an offline icon appears in the top bar (tap it for what is saved on your device and when it last synced), your last-seen screens and card art are kept on the device, and the website itself loads offline.
Challenges now count only games started in their period — today’s goals only see games you began today, so old or unfinished games no longer add progress — and finishing a challenge during a game shows its celebration right away, as a banner that drops from the top bar.
On the website, when Google has no ad to show, watching an ad for an extra game or double XP now plays a short BoomTown ad instead of saying none is available, so it always works.
Watching an ad can no longer leave the button spinning for ever: if the ad network is blocked, offline or never answers, you get "no ad is available right now" within a few seconds and can try again or close the window.
On iPhone, the first time you choose to watch an ad the app asks once whether ads may use tracking (never asked of players under 18); either answer is fine and the ad plays the same.
The app’s offline helper no longer sits between the browser and other sites (Google’s ad network, the game server), so rewarded ads load straight from Google.
Building a card pays for it the moment you confirm: coins fly out of your coin badge to the card, a red amount rises from the badge and the number counts down straight away, even while the coins from your roll are still landing, instead of waiting until the card reaches your hand.
Every window can now move on by its buttons, a tap anywhere, or by itself after a set time (with an optional pause before it can be skipped), and the pictures built into windows can be replaced, resized or hidden.
The Settings window is gone: its Home button now opens your profile, sound is set from the top bar, and new games open at the hand size you last picked with the + and − buttons.
Admins can be notified whenever a player buys something, with separate switches for real-money purchases (Gold Bar packs and tips) and in-game purchases made with Gold Bars.
New accolades can be earned by meeting their own conditions, with an “Accolade earned!” window, and every accolade’s artwork, words and windows can now be customised — plus an Accolade Center for admins to create and edit them. The player card now shows how many accolades a player has, with a ribbon icon.
A My Town button on the score screen opens your town in a window over it — tap plots, build what’s waiting and see every achievement without leaving the results.
The player card is drawn in the same proportions everywhere; My Town lists every achievement with your progress and lets you tap a plot to see what builds it; the achievement banner now drops from the top bar after the score screen finishes; seasonal challenges award profile ribbons (accolades), tippers earn a Benefactor ribbon they keep for good, and challenges can pay Gold Bars as well as or instead of XP.
Challenges can have several requirements on any tab, each with its own progress bar, and can count only games with other humans (AI allowed) or humans-only games; the admin editor builds them without JSON, seasonal challenges can be disabled again and show only between their dates, and the seasonal detail window no longer says every challenge is completed.
Seasonal and event artwork fades in instead of jumping in over the regular art, the Challenges button appears sooner and fades in, the logo swells on hover, and public games use the lobby’s trash button.
Cleaner player cards and trackers: no borders, building bars stay inside the rounded corners, and whose turn it is shows by dimming everyone else slightly instead of a green ring.
Seasonal challenges look like the daily and weekly ones in light and dark mode, and the development card column on wide screens sizes itself so no card is cut off.
New games are public by default; players see who is watching (an eye with a count in the top bar), and you can watch a friend’s public game from the friends menu.
Public games: your own stay listed (marked Yours), and anyone can watch a game in progress on a live board, switching between players.
Expansions in the lobby now say in a line what each one adds to the game.
Card previews in the lobby and Create Game have proper card corners, and the gold Supporter ring now shows on the public profile and leaderboards too.
BoomTown 2: town achievements go live from today, replacing the old ones (now Legacy Achievements); the profile shows Town Progress, and an achievement can give any mix of rewards.
Friends’ games: Review Board on their score screen opens the final board, with every player’s buildings.
Player card: Gold Bars moved under the XP bar so the rank name has room, and tapping them opens the Store.
Bar packs show their normal amount beside the ×2, so the first-purchase bonus no longer looks like four times the bars.
The thank-you bonus preview now shows what each past buyer bought.
House ads: short BoomTown promotions stand in for web ads until Google approves H5 Games Ads.
The old one-time products are no longer sold for money; expansions and Deep Dive Stats now point to the Gold Bars store.
The Gold Bars Pricing, Terms, Refund and Privacy pages are now live for everyone.
Gold Bars drafts of the Pricing, Terms, Refund and Privacy pages, shown only to admins until launch.
Editable Guide: admins now see an Edit guide button on the Guide's Tutorial tab. Every section can be edited in place: title, icon (an emoji or an uploaded picture), title font, size and colour, and its content as text blocks (with bold, bullets, numbered steps and links, each with its own font, size, colour and alignment) and pictures or screenshots (with a caption and a size). Sections can be added, hidden, reordered and deleted, with a live preview while editing. Quick Tips is now one of the sections too.
Joining after an ad: when a player accepts an invite or joins a public game but has used today's free game, the room now shows them in a faded "Joining… watching a short ad" seat while they watch, so nobody thinks they are not coming. When the ad finishes they are joined straight into the room; if they close the window instead, the seat clears.
Guide: the PDF Rules tab is gone, so the Guide opens straight on the Tutorial, with Cards beside it.
Gold Bars store tidy-up: avatars are a compact grid with the price shown once ("each · tap one to buy"); tap an avatar to buy it, and a tick marks the ones you own (tap to wear). Expansions are one row each, a small picture on the left and the description beside it. The Theatre button now has a stage-curtain icon and reads +5 with the gold bar.
Leaderboard: “How the Prestige works” is now folded away by default, so the boards come first; tap Show to read it.
Easier to read over the artwork: text that sat straight on the background scenery (the leaderboard season row, the Friends headings, filter chips and sort, empty messages, page titles on Profile, Guide and the General Store, the Achievements filters) now sits on a frosted backing, the invite card is solid, and the Event Cards, Cards Admin and Music Mapper admin pages now sit on the same solid admin panel as the dashboard. The leaderboard season picker is now just the four seasons (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer) and All Time; a season that has not started yet shows when it begins.
Friends page: friends are now listed most recently active first, with quick filters (All, Online, Playing now, Active this week) and a sort (Recently active, Name, Level), and the page remembers your choice for next time. Each friend shows their level, games played, wins and time played this week. A new Recent games button lists a friend's last finished games (won or played, against whom, when); tap one to see its full score screen, just like your own, view only.
Friend referrals: every player now has their own invite link at the top of the Friends page. When a friend makes a new account from it, the inviter gets 200 XP and 3 days ad-free (announced live with the XP flying to their player card, and listed in the notifications panel), and the new friend gets 3 days ad-free with a welcome. Admin → Economy → Friend referrals sets the amounts and a monthly cap, and lists recent referrals. The ad-free part is shown to players once Gold Bars launch.
Likes: the Like button on a winner card is only there the first time you see a game's results (a quick reload still counts) and closes 30 minutes later, so likes come while the game is fresh. When someone likes your win, wherever you are in the app you now see their name with the coloured like icon pop up and fly to the notifications bell, and the +5 XP flies to your player card (from the winner card when its score screen is open). Likes on your wins also show in the notifications panel for two weeks.
Android test app: GitHub can now build an installable Android test version of BoomTown and put it on the "Android test build" release page, ready to download and install on an Android phone. Each new test build installs over the last one.
Admin → User Management → Perks can now give a player the gold Supporter ring for any number of days (added onto what they have left) or end it now, and the change is recorded in the perks log like every other perk.
Gold Supporter ring: every $1 tip puts a gold ring around the player's profile picture for a day ($30 is a month), and tipping again adds the days on top. Everyone sees the ring on profile pictures and the home player card (never on AI players). The tip jar tells the player how many days a tip gives and when their ring ends, and a refunded tip takes its days back. Admin → Economy → Tip jar sets the days per tip. Before Gold Bars launch only admins see rings.
Tip jar in the Gold Bars store: a $1 tip a player can buy as many times as they like (− / + or ×1, ×5, ×10, ×25), from a Tip jar button or under the Gold Bar packs. A tip gives nothing in the game. The store thanks the player and shows how much they have tipped, and Admin → Economy → Tip jar shows every tip. It stays hidden until its Paddle price is added (check with Paddle first: their rules do not allow donations). The phone app now has BoomTown's own AdMob app IDs.
Phone app ads: the iPhone and Android app can now play Google AdMob rewarded ads for the Theatre, extra games and double XP, chosen in Admin → Economy → Phone app ads (separately from the website). It starts with Google's sample ads; paste each app's rewarded ad unit ID and switch sample ads off for real ones. Ads are limited to general audiences, players under 18 get non-personalised ads, the Europe/UK consent message is shown when needed, and app-ads.txt is served at /app-ads.txt. Views still go through the same server checks and Ads dashboard.
Phone app groundwork: BoomTown can now be built as an iPhone and Android app from the same code. Inside the app, Google and Facebook sign-in open in the phone's browser and come straight back, Android's back button goes back a screen, and web-only things stand aside for now — web push, Google web ads (the test ad card is used instead) and paying real money (bought on the website until in-app purchases are added). Shared invite links always point at boomtowngame.com. The website is unchanged.
Player perks for admins: User Management → Perks now shows everything a player owns, each with a switch that gives or takes it away at once — Unlimited Play (no game limit and ad-free for good), ad-free for a chosen number of days, each expansion or all of them, Deep Dive Stats, the photo upload, avatar packs, every avatar, single avatars and winner card backgrounds — with a record of which admin changed what.
The launch thank-you for past buyers: Economy can preview every player who has paid for something (from Paddle's records, refunded purchases excluded, with old-store buyers optionally counted once) and give them Gold Bars per purchase — 500 to start — once per player, ever. Each one is thanked with a message the first time they open the app after Gold Bars launch; Unlimited Play owners are reminded they are ad-free for good.
Buying Gold Bars on the web: Gold Bar packs (100, 550, 1,200 and 2,500 to start) are set in Economy, each sold through a Paddle price, and appear behind "Buy Gold Bars" in the store once priced — with double bars on a player's first purchase. Paddle's confirmed payment adds the bars on the server once per transaction; a full refund takes them back, never below zero, recording any shortfall. Ordinary purchases and refunds work exactly as before, and the payment webhook now deploys itself, refusing to if its signature check were ever missing.
AdSense site verification: BoomTown's publisher ID is now on every page as Google's ownership meta tag and served in /ads.txt, and it is filled in under Economy → Web ads. Google's ad library itself still loads only when a rewarded ad plays.
Real web ads are ready to switch on: Google H5 Games Ads (AdSense) can now play every rewarded ad — the Theatre, the extra game and double XP — in place of the test ad, chosen in Economy → Web ads with your AdSense publisher ID and Google's test mode until approval. ads.txt is served automatically from that ID. Players under 18, or not yet asked their age, only get non-personalised ads; when Google has no ad to show the player is told and the Ads dashboard records it apart from ads closed early; and a real ad counts once Google says it was watched, with a short floor that only stops faked views.
The 13+ age check (switched off until an admin turns it on in Economy): every signed-in player is asked once, neutrally, when they were born; only the age group is kept, never the date, and the answer cannot be changed. Anyone under 13 sees "BoomTown is for players 13 and older", their account is scheduled for deletion and the device remembers. Admins can preview the screen without anything being recorded.
The extra-game ad and the double-XP ad (switched off for players): once Gold Bars are on, everyone gets the free games set in Economy (1 to start) and every game counts — created, joined, story, rematches and AI games — then an ad watched to the end unlocks each extra game, with no limit for ad-free players, Unlimited Play owners or admins; a grudge rematch counts but is never refused, and joins can be left out in Economy. The score screen offers to double that game's XP for watching a 30-second ad, or with one tap when ad-free, checked and granted once per game on the server. Until Gold Bars are switched on, players keep the 3-games-a-day rule exactly as before; admins can preview the new limit on their own device from Economy.
Waiting lobby tidied: the game's name is no longer repeated above the buttons (it stays in the top bar); Delete, Notify, Joins and I'm Ready are now exactly the same size on phone and desktop; and Live draft, Random deal, Foundations Mode and Ranked Match each have a white icon on a coloured square — Live draft uses the top bar's friends icon, Foundations a new solid cornerstone, and uploading "random_icon" or "foundations_icon" to the Asset Registry replaces those two.
Join Public Game now shows live stats: the lobby button shows how many players are online and how many open games can be joined, and the Join Public Game page adds how many players are mid-game and how many public games are in progress. Full games no longer count as open.
The Theatre and ad tracking (switched off for players): a Theatre, opened from the Gold Bars store, where a player can choose to watch an ad for Gold Bars — up to a daily cap, paid only when the server agrees the ad ran its full length, and nothing if it is closed early. Until an ad network is approved it plays a labelled test ad of BoomTown’s own. A new admin Ads tile shows ads started and watched, where and by whom, Gold Bars paid out and a revenue estimate, by day and by placement; the ad length and the revenue estimate are set in Economy, and the Theatre window is customisable in the Modal Editor.
Gold Bars fixes: the balance now shows on the home screen player card (the home screen draws its own copy of the card, which had been missed), and an avatar bought with Gold Bars can be worn at once — a "Use it now" button right after buying, a "Use" button on every owned avatar in the store, and its own "Bought with Gold Bars" section at the top of the avatar picker, even for admins.
The Gold Bars store (still switched off for players): avatars bought one at a time, ad-free for a day, week or month (each pass adds onto the time left; Unlimited Play buyers are ad-free for good), winner card backgrounds the admin marks for sale, expansions the admin ticks in Economy, Deep Dive Stats and uploading your own avatar photo — each priced from Admin → Economy, with the charge worked out on the server and the bars and the item changing hands together or not at all. The avatar picker unlocks avatars bought singly and shows the rest as locked; earlier pack purchases keep everything. Admins see it now, with a link back to the old store, which is what players still get.
Join Public Game tidied: with no games open there is now one Create Public Game button instead of two (the top-right one only shows while games are listed), the "+" signs and the "Start one…" line are gone, and the globe icon is removed from that page and from its button in the game lobby.
Gold Bars foundation (switched off for players): a new in-game currency with a server-kept balance and a full record of every bar earned or spent, an admin Economy tile to set what a bar is worth and the price of everything (ad-free day 100, week 500, month 1,500, an avatar 100), give or remove bars and watch the activity, the balance on the home and score-screen player cards, and an occasional small Gold Bar drop from the daily crate. Until an admin switches it on, only admins see any of it.
Admin Dashboard tidied and sign-up alerts added: Feature Toggles, Quick Actions, Data Management and AI Players now sit behind their own Admin Tools tile instead of under every page of the dashboard, and a new switch there sends an admin a notification whenever a new player signs up for BoomTown. A "your turn" alert for another game that arrives while the app is open now shows in the app with a Go to game button, and tapping the phone or desktop notification from inside a different game takes you to that game.
Modal Editor previews (End Game Triggered – Final Turns and others) now draw inside the preview and the device frames instead of over the whole editor. Those modals used to open on top of the page, so the preview looked blank and clicking Edit left an uneditable modal covering the editor that only a refresh cleared.
Swipe gestures now work while reviewing the board after a game ends: left for the trackers, right for the player cards, up for the leaderboard, down for the game log, the same as during play. Review had switched them off, leaving the panels most worth reviewing out of reach on a phone. Nothing in review can be acted on, so a swipe there only opens a panel to look at.
Hydro Dam fixes. A second Hydro Dam overriding the first now pays the first dam’s owner everything it had collected; those coins used to vanish. The dam now catches every Green and Blue Bank payout to its owner’s opponents, including Train Station, Water Tower, Post Office, the Library and Inn payouts, the Market roll and the union bonus, which used to slip past it. The colours it catches no longer depend on how the card data spells them. Takes effect for the next dam activation in games already in progress. No migration needed.
Moving between games is smoother. Leaving a game for the lobby keeps the game music playing for 30 seconds; going into another game in that time carries straight on, and only a longer stay brings in the menu music. The build icon now takes you straight to your game when exactly one is waiting on your turn. Otherwise it lists all your active games, marked Your turn or showing whose turn it is, and no longer counts finished games. The on-screen chat notice now opens that chat when tapped (going to that game if needed), and the game invite notice joins that game’s lobby; taps in its first moment are ignored so it cannot be hit by accident. No migration needed.
Town Builder: buildings and items can be sheared and turned in depth. A new Shear and perspective panel in the Town tab has four controls, each going either way: Shear sideways (lean left or right, the base stays put), Shear up/down (slope it), Pan (turn it left or right as if seen from the side) and Tilt (lean it toward or away). Each has a slider, a number box with ±, a 0° reset and a Reset all. All four pivot on the point the building stands on, undo like any other change, and look the same at every size, so players see exactly what the editor shows. No migration needed.
Achievement conditions for tie games. A new Ties group counts games finished tied for first on points, tie games where the win was shared (level on points and coins), and coin tiebreaks won and lost. The same four can be checked game by game in "Games where…", for example "share the win in a game of 4 or more players". Six new templates. Counting starts with games played from this version on. No migration needed.
Scrap pile achievements. New conditions in a Scrap pile group: cards scrapped (all games, or the most in one game) and cards bought from the scrap pile (all games, or the most in one game), plus per-game "cards you scrapped" and "cards bought from the scrap pile" for "Games where…" challenges. A scrap counts when the player sent the card there: card effects and actions such as the Referendum, a duplicate Purple on a purchase, the ownership limit, and the Salesman and Auctioneer abilities. Market refills and events do not count. Purchase, Salesman and Auctioneer scraps were not counted before, so the Recycle hidden objective now sees them too. Eight new templates. Counting starts with games played from this version on. No migration needed.
New achievement conditions for coins and development cards. The game now counts, for each development card, how often its ability was really used (a kept roll, the plain sum, or nothing scrapped does not count) and how many coins it brought in (for the Safe Deposit Box, coins it saved). New lifetime rules: most coins at the end of a game; a chosen development card’s ability uses, coins earned and games finished owning it; and most development cards in one game. New per-game checks for "Games where…": coins at the end, owning (or not owning) a development card, development cards owned, and a card’s uses or coins in that game. Ten new templates. Counting starts with games played from this version on. No migration needed.
Hosts can be told when someone joins their game. A new Joins button in the waiting lobby (host only) turns on alerts for that game; each invited friend or Join Public Game player who joins sends one. The host gets a phone or desktop notification when the app is closed or in the background, an in-app notice with an Open lobby button when the app is open on another screen, and nothing when already in that lobby. Also fixed: the lobby’s turn-notification button could be turned on but never off. Needs the host join alerts SQL.
Achievement challenges can now ask how fast and by how much a game was won. "Games where…" gains minutes the game lasted, turns you took, rounds played, and points ahead of the next-best player, for rules like "win within 30 minutes", "win in 15 turns or fewer" or "win by 20+ points". The game now records when play starts and ends and counts each player’s turns. A game missing those records never passes a time or turn rule. Six new Speed & margin templates. The BoardGameGeek and share exports now give the real game length instead of 0. No migration needed.
Town plots can now be explored. On desktop a plot lights up while hovered and opens a card on click; on a phone a tap lights it and slides up the card. The card shows the building’s stage and the next achievement that builds it, with each requirement in plain words and a progress bar, or says a stage is ready to build, the plot is finished, or nothing unlocks it yet. It is in the Town Builder preview now (progress uses your own stats) and comes with the player town screen once that is built. No migration needed.
The main Achievements editor gets the full rule builder in place of raw JSON, including per-game challenges like "win 10 games, each owning 3 Water Towers" and every card, union, Landmark, coin and card-use stat; JSON stays available. "Start from a template" opens any of the 34 templates as a new achievement, with a suggested rarity, category and badge. Saves no longer send fields that have no column (a custom badge was never stored), and any emoji can now be the badge. No migration needed.
Town achievements: per-game challenges and a template library. A new rule, "Number of games where…", counts games that meet several things in that same game, for example "win 10 games, each owning 3 Water Towers". Each game can be tested for a win, copies of a card, union cards or sets, all 5 Landmarks, coins from a card, card uses, coins taken from opponents, cards owned, score, player count and Foundations mode. Games count from when the achievement exists and is switched on. "Start from a template" offers 34 ready-made achievements in eight groups to open as editable drafts. No migration needed.
Town Builder: negative numbers can now be entered on a phone, in Nudge X and Y, positions, rotation, movement distances and the plot marker. An iPhone’s number keypad has no minus key, and a lone "-" used to be wiped as soon as it was typed. Now a minus can be typed and is kept while the rest of the number follows, and every box that can go negative has a ± button to flip the sign with one tap. No migration needed.
In-game hints, and guided tutorial steps, can now be kept to one kind of screen. A new Show on setting in the Tutorial Steps editor offers Mobile and desktop (the default, how every step worked before), Mobile only, or Desktop only. Device-only steps are badged in the list, and players on the other kind of screen never see them. Needs the tutorial devices SQL.
Town Builder eraser: a Restore brush, the opposite of Erase. It paints the original artwork back under the brush, with the same size and edge-softness controls, so a spot erased too far can be repaired without starting the whole image over. Switch with the Erase / Restore buttons or the E and R keys; the brush ring turns green while restoring. Restore strokes undo and redo like any other. If the image was already erased and saved before, Restore paints from the very first upload, so earlier erasing can be painted back too. No migration needed.
Town Builder, Town tab: proper zoom and pan, made for phones. Pinch with two fingers to zoom and move around, drag the ground with one finger to move the view, or use the floating − / + / Fit buttons (zoom in 25% steps, shown as a percentage of the background’s real size). On a computer, Ctrl/⌘ + wheel or a trackpad pinch zooms at the cursor and the wheel moves around when zoomed in. A Hand button makes every drag move the view, so nothing is moved by accident; a locked building can be dragged across to pan too. Buildings still drag normally at any zoom, and a second finger always turns a drag into a pinch. On phones the town now gets most of the screen’s height. Tracing a custom plot marker is easier: a + on every edge adds a point there, the selected point gets its own delete button, and a compact bar on the canvas holds Delete, Undo and Done, so there is no scrolling down to the panel while working. No migration needed.
Town Builder: the plot marker (the glowing, pulsing shape a player taps to build on a plot) is now set per building and per device. Pick an oval, rectangle, rounded rectangle, diamond, or a custom shape traced point by point around the plot in the artwork, with as many points as needed: tap to add one, tap near an edge to add one between two, drag points to move them, and remove any of them. Basic shapes can be dragged into place, sized with handles and rotated. The fill colour and strength, outline colour, width and dashes, glow colour and pulse are all adjustable, with Use this look on every plot to copy one style to them all. Changes are undoable, respect the lock, and copy across with Copy from desktop. No migration needed.
Town Builder, Town tab: Undo and Redo (also Ctrl/⌘+Z and Ctrl/⌘+Shift+Z), covering moves, drags, scale, rotation, the banner and the animation settings, and still working after Save, so an accidental move can be put back. A Lock button on each building, item and the banner stops it being dragged, nudged or edited until it is unlocked. Keep proportions is now an explicit switch: Scale always grows width and height together, and unticking it lets the width and height be stretched separately. A new Rotate control turns a building or item about the point it stands on. Anything standing outside the background picture (so invisible) is flagged, with a Bring it into view button. A new eraser removes stray bits of artwork: brush size, edge softness, zoom, an option to show the town background behind the art, unlimited undo and redo, and Save keeps the original so Revert to original can always bring it back. No migration needed.
Town Builder (admin only for now): items and new achievement conditions. Besides three-stage buildings, the town can now have ITEMS (train tracks, a train, lamp posts, people on the street), each one image unlocked whole by a single achievement. Items can move, set per device: walk back and forth turning round at each end, glide back and forth, or run across and round again like a train, with the distance and speed adjustable and a Preview movement button on the Town tab. Achievements can now ask for: games finished owning a specific card, copies of a card owned in one game, cards of a particular union owned in one game, union sets completed, games finished with all five Landmarks, coins collected from a specific card (for example the Hydro Dam), coins taken from opponents, and times a specific card was used (Law Firm, Pawn Shop, Dispensary, Jail and any other card). The game now counts coins per card and card uses as they happen, and adds them to each player’s lifetime stats at the end of every game, counting from this version on. It also fixes coins paid to a Jail’s owner, which were missing from the hidden-objective tallies. Needs the town items SQL.
A new profile picture now shows everywhere. The picture was kept in three places on each account, and different screens read them in different orders, so after picking a new one on the Profile page the Home player card kept showing the random picture given at sign-up. Several in-game spots (your seat in the game lobby, the draft, the points breakdown) used a copy stored on the device, so other phones and computers kept the old picture. Now a new picture is saved to all three places at once and shows straight away, every screen reads it the same way, your own picture comes from your account rather than the device, and visiting Profile can no longer hand out a second random picture. The new SQL lines up existing accounts and the leaderboard copy.
Join Public Game no longer offers games you cannot join. A game whose seats are all taken by human players is marked Full, moves to the bottom of the list and has no Join button. A game with AI in it still has room: a player who joins takes an AI’s seat, so the seat count shown is now human players only, with the AI listed beside it. The moment a host starts a public game it leaves the join list. That, and the seat counts, are now kept up to date by the database from the game itself, so players leaving or being removed and AI being added or taken away are all reflected, and a started game cannot linger as joinable if the host’s phone drops the update. Needs the public-games SQL.
Public games are easier to start and to find. Join Public Game now has a Create Public Game button, in its header and on the empty “no public games” screen. It goes straight into the new game’s lobby, with the game already listed for everyone and its Public switch already on, and with open seats instead of the usual two AI so strangers can actually join (AI can still be added from the lobby). Tapping the AI character for a quick game now also checks for waiting public games: if any have a free seat, the window says how many and adds a Join a public game button beside Get building! and Not Yet. With none waiting it is exactly as before. No migration needed.
Taglines in the Loading Screen editor now work exactly like the loading phrases. They are one list, one tagline per line (a | splits a tagline onto two lines), with “Start from the built-in tagline” and “Clear (use built-in)”, so the built-in “The Frontier Awaits / Stake Your Claim” can be edited or replaced too. One tagline style covers every tagline, including the built-in one, set separately for desktop and phones: size, spacing, position, max width, colour, weight, case, alignment and font. Two fixes come with it: Max Width can now go past the loading screen’s centre column (up to the screen’s width), and Left/Right alignment now actually moves the lines. The taglines and phrases each save on their own, the preview cycles through taglines as well as phrases, and the current enabled taglines are copied across, with the newest one’s look, by the new loading-screen SQL. Until it is run, players see the taglines exactly as before.
Fixed a stream of false crash reports from one iPhone: “JSON Parse error: Unexpected EOF” (and “Unterminated string”, “Expected ‘}’”) at index.js:48:3220. That spot is inside Supabase’s live-update decoder: a live-update message arrived cut short, the decoder threw, and the app filed it as a crash, marking the session as crashed and counting it towards crash-loop protection. A garbled message is now quietly dropped and noted in the diagnostics trail, and a game in progress immediately re-fetches its state, so nothing the message carried is missed. No migration needed.
The admin dashboard’s Taglines editor is now the Loading Screen editor, covering the taglines and the rotating loading phrases (“Surveying the land…”), each styled separately for desktop and for phones. A Desktop / Mobile switch at the top picks which look is being edited: desktop is the base, and on Mobile any change (size, position, colour, font, weight, spacing, alignment, max width) is stored as a phone-only override, marked in blue with a one-click way back to the desktop value. The phrase list can be replaced with your own lines, one per line, or cleared to use the built-in list, and the custom phrases appear everywhere loading phrases show, not just the loading screen. The phrase’s size, colour, font, weight, spacing, case and position are editable per device too. Beside the editor is a live preview of the real loading screen at phone (390×844) or desktop (1280×720) size, unsaved edits included. Save results stay on screen. Needs the loading-screen migration.
Town Builder achievements save. A new achievement could not be saved until every part of it was decided — conditions, the building it builds, the reward amount — and the only sign was small text at the top of the form, so it looked like saving simply did nothing. Now anything with a title saves straight away; an unfinished one is saved as a draft, switched off so it can never be earned half-written, with a clear note of what is left before it can be switched on. The result of every save (saved, saved as a draft, or the database’s exact reason for refusing it) now stays on screen beside the form, and the list marks drafts. No migration needed.
On phones, the game board — markets, decks and development cards — is now pinned in place. Reported on Android: swiping up for the leaderboard could slide the market cards up the screen, cut off, with no way to bring them back short of leaving the game. The board already ignored swipes that start on it, but a swipe starting on the top bar, the hand or the footer could scroll the whole page underneath it, and the browser itself could shift the board (moving focus, or adjusting for a size change) — and since the board ignores swipes, nothing could scroll it back. Now the page cannot scroll while the board is up, and if the page or the board is ever found moved it snaps straight back. Every swipe gesture still works. The pre-game lobby still scrolls; desktop is unchanged. No migration needed.