An English that counted differently, a seed that stays put, and a game you can install

The English cards were counting in a different currency.

English is the default language, so most players read the cards in English. Seven English texts promised something other than what the game did: The Inheritor said +4 rate and paid $300 per debt card, The Planner claimed $300 and paid $150, The Core Team said three colleagues or fewer when four was fine. The English scope thresholds were also listed in the wrong order, so at 150% you were warned about locked cards that only arrive at 200%. While fixing that, every card got the same units in both languages: rate always as an amount (+$300 rate, never +3), work always as hours of work.

More than a dozen bugs, and one from day one.

A certificate that did nothing, because its bonus was reset right before you could use it. An Evil Corp condition you could reroll by reloading. The Koon rolling his dice every time you tapped a card, so the preview changed with every tap and the same seed stopped producing the same run. Enter in the seed field closed the window instead of starting. Resuming a saved game reshuffled which cards were locked. And the archive, since the very first version, showed every revenue a hundred times too small: $35,600 where the end screen said $3,559,967.

A test that plays the game.

The automatic check used to confirm that the game loaded. Now a bot plays five complete runs before anything is published, one of them all the way through Platinum and two change requests, and the same seed has to end on exactly the same cent, even when the bot taps around in between. Every Dutch and English card text is compared number by number. Put any of the bugs above back and publishing stops.

Smaller things you'll notice.

Statistics at the top of the archive: projects, best revenue, results per firm, favourite combinations. A line on the map at the start of each phase, looking back at the last one. Rare combinations now land properly: a gold flash for the uncommon ones, and for Maturity Level 5 a banner, falling paper and coins. It turns up in 0.08% of hands, so it had better look like it. And the game can now be played entirely with a keyboard or a screen reader.

The leaderboard shows the seed.

The rank that appeared on the leaderboard yesterday is gone again; the seed of the run is there instead. Tap it to copy, and replay that exact run through Custom seed in the game.

And the game moved in.

Next to itch.io, the game now also lives here, at koonsultancy.com/speel. On a phone you can add it to your home screen, and it keeps working without a connection. Progress stays in your own browser and nowhere else; one tap in the settings on itch brings it along. Every update lands on itch and here at the same time, and an open game tells you when a new version is ready.

One engagement a day, the same for everyone.

The title screen now has a daily challenge. Everyone gets the same seed, at the same firm, as Bronze Partner, with only the base cards, so nobody's unlocks tilt the table. It changes at midnight, Dutch time. Your first attempt of the day goes on a separate daily leaderboard, and the server checks that the seed really is that day's. Play it as often as you like; only the first one counts. Much like a real proposal.

Later that evening: a version number, and clients who talk.

The game now shows a proper version number on the title screen. Every update gets the next one, and tonight ended at 1.2.1. Between sprints, now and then, someone at the client reports something. Stock at -40 after selling 40. A DROP TABLE query, that's fine, right? Fifty of them, from twenty different people, purely for show. The home screen icon now comes in ivory or slate, and the title screen no longer hides behind the iPhone clock.

A finished game with more than a dozen bugs in it. In this industry, that's called a stable release.