Elementyle

With patch 0.2.1 now released, I feel that it’s a good opportunity to look at the remaining schedule of updates for 2025, and the overall development roadmap that is currently projected out to the end of 2026.

2025 Remaining Updates and Changes

With match statistics now (roughly) implemented, there is a lot of back-end work I want to get done to set the course for how updates and changes will work in the future.

Right now, there are basically two kinds of stats: constant increment, and match period averages.

Constant increment stats include things like number of wins/losses, number of pieces played, etc. These stats don’t lapse or reset currently.

Match period averages measure the different aspects of gameplay over a 10 match period. When you play your 11th or beyond match, the oldest data is deleted. This exists to prevent certain stats from “settling” in place, making it take more and more matches to even notice a difference.

The stats system is definitely far from complete, but this complex system needs more time and iteration to be fully completed. I didn’t want to keep pushing this out while I figure out the more intricate parts of these systems, but I want to ensure that progress is being made.

Keep in mind, there will 100% be stat resets and clears in the future as I continue to make changes, but as the game gets closer and closer to full release, these resets should become less and less frequent. I want to make the system more resiliant to updates and allow for porting of certain stats, but those metrics aren’t currently in the game yet.

Two key changes in how stats work will be coming over the next year: a separate tracking of “eternal” stat counters for match plays, piece plays, and other assorted measures will be introduced for the sole purpose of achievement progress tracking; and temporary or event/seasonal based stats for special competitive groups / tournaments.

These two changes will be significant overhauls to how the current stat system works, but will add a lot more interesting things to work towards as the game becomes more complete.

As of writing this, there is a very real possibility that the game moves to a “seasonal” reset structure, where stats and progress accumulate for a given time period, 2-4 months or so, and are then archived and new stats take their place. This will be explored more and more as new features get built out.

Beyond the stat changes, there are still a few core changes to be made before the end of 2025. Primarily, advanced info panels and match history (and possibly replays).

The info panels were started a while back with the piece status panel being first out. Patch 0.2.1a will see the release of two more panels with additional in-game stats display:

• Player Status Panel – showing both player’s current statuses at all times.
• Action Turn Review Panel – showing a move history for all actions taken each turn.
• New Stat Labels – showing average tiles and moves per turn for both players.

These new UI components are currently implemented and being debugged and tested, with release hopefully occurring in early to mid December. These are part of the slated updates for the November-December development block, but I am trying to get ahead of some of the bigger changes to come.

In addition to these changes, match history is slated to be released in 0.2.1a. This will, at the very least, give some additional information into the stats being displayed in the ‘Set Info’ tab of the user profiles. Match replays are a tentative feature as this was previously implemented and then disabled during the massive server overhaul earlier this year. If the code for this can be restored and completed, players will be able to download replays from the server to review. For storage reasons, only the last 10 matches will be stored, with your 11th match queuing the 1st match replay to be deleted.

2026 January-February Development Block

Once the Statistics and Information block is concluded, up next is the Input and Compatibility block. The January-February updates will focus on making controller and touchscreen support work across the entire application, adding new safeguards and confirmation settings for placing pieces, moving pieces, and generally making it easier to interact with the UI components.

These changes will be available on desktop as well, with the goal being automatically detecting when a controller is connected and enabling button hints where applicable, full button re-mapping capability, and a set of options to control where you want input confirmations. Input confirmations for actions like piece placement and piece selection will be available for all input methods including keyboard+mouse.

The culmination of these two changes will be a full review and confirmation of compatibility with Steam Deck, and releasing the mobile app version for Android.

A key roadblock for this update currently is the separation of Android and Steam authentication. There are a few avenues to explore for this and I haven’t fully settled on the solution yet.

From initial review and research, it seems plausible to use Steam for login and authentication on the mobile app, meaning you would use the same account (Steam) as the basis of your authentication flow for desktop and Android. This would be the cleanest solution from a development perspective, but significantly limits individuals who want to use Google for their authentication method.

It would be extremely convenient to leverage one authentication ecosystem for everything, because any features I build in that leverage Steam for any reason (achievements for example) would just work and be shared across devices.

The main issue with this is Android-only users who do not have a Steam account and do not want one would effectively be locked out. This is not ideal for a number of reasons. Ultimately, the answer will likely be to create a sort of “layer” for the server to seamlessly interact and sync with both Steam and Google Play features. This will undoubtedly be more work in the short and long term, but the result will be much better for Steam-only, Android-only, and hybrid platform players.

With all of this in mind, a number of the concerns are not truly pressing for this update to be completed, they simply have to be accounted for ahead of its implementation. As this set of updates get closer, more information on the final decision will be made. As always, feedback is welcome on this but it will likely come down to implementation specifics.

Wrapping Up

There is still an inordinate amount of work ahead. As you can tell from the image at the top of this post, updates are scheduled out for the next year already, and that’s assuming some of the larger updates do not get bumped out due to any variety of factors. It’s my best intention to stick to this schedule despite some of the delays getting here (there were 2 missed releases this year since the initial release schedule being established) but I am hoping to limit this moving forward.

My time is stretched thin, and there are constantly new bugs and issues to fix that I cannot account for. Some of these updates (March-April, July-August, November-December) are absolute monsters in terms of scope. I’m hoping some of the lighter updates like this final one for December will allow me to get ahead even a few weeks in order to get some of these rolling sooner than the schedule plans for. Only time will tell if these large goals can be reached on this schedule.

The one thing I do not want to compromise on is getting some kind of update out on a regular basis. The server rework was insanely massive and the game went without update for a very, very long time despite the work that was being put into it. The structural changes should help prevent this from happening again but like with the Windows version issue I ran into for 0.2.1 which lost me ~30 hours of development time, things sometimes just happen.

I look forward to getting more and more updates out, and hopefully being able to do more for the presentation of the game as we move into 2026. This project is now stretching into it’s 3rd year of development which is absolutely insane but a number of factors have contributed to the drawn out development timeline. I am just one person at the end of the day so a project of this scale and magnitude is an incredible undertaking, especially with the expanded scope (yes, I am my own worst enemy on this).

I encourage anyone with interest to check out the updates as I get them out and provide feedback in whatever form is most convenient for you, whether it be here on the website, on X, in Steam discussions, or via the in-game feedback form (F1). Thank you for reading.