Elementyle

To wrap up patch 0.2.1, patch 0.2.1a is currently slated for release tomorrow, February 7th. This should check off the two pieces of the development roadmap from November-December 2025.

While initially I wanted to get this update out in January, I was also working on the updates slated for the January-February 2026 roadmap block. Those updates should be getting released in patch 0.2.2 on February 28th.

Patch 0.2.1a will be a smaller patch, focusing on adding some clarity in a few places and cleaning up some of the back-end work that was done for the previous patch. One of the changes that was staged but not yet ready for release was a move away from “real-time” PvP matches. This is more of a technical change than a gameplay change, getting away from using the match runtime for these matches and instead doing “passive” multiplayer. The benefits of making this change are not immediately apparent or even active at this time, but it is in preparation for more large-scale architectural changes coming in the future, namely the load balancing/multi-node game server structure that will be needed in the future. This feature most likely will not make it into patch 0.2.2, but it shouldn’t have much impact on player experience.

The core changes for 0.2.1a are the Action Turn Review panel, which shows a history of moves made for each turn; an adjustment to the match stats visible for players during the game, showing average tiles claimed and moves per turn; the Player status menu to show non-standard player statuses; match history in player profiles; and a few other assorted bug fixes. Full patch notes should be released later today or tomorrow along with the patch, depending on a few minor changes left to make.

There is plenty more work to do regarding the stats and visibility of information within the game, but this should cap off these changes for now. The next steps for patch 0.2.2 will be focusing on controller support, including remapping of buttons/actions, touch screen support, new action confirmation menus to add a 2-step validation to making moves on the board (on by default for controller/touchscreen, off by default for KB+M, optionally togglable for all input methods), full Steam Deck compatibility, and possibly early testing of the Elementyle Android app.

Most of the above changes are either being worked on or tested currently, but the Android app is furthest from complete. There is a lot more logic to do for this, including the expansion of authentication methods for the game. Something I want to avoid but may not be able to for the time being is ensuring that:

• Google authentication works for mobile and desktop.
• Steam authentication works for mobile.
• Authentication methods can be linked so that players can easily swap between desktop and mobile.

If one or more of these cannot be met, this could be a point of friction for the game, bifurcating the play structure in that players who start on desktop cannot reasonably pick up where they left off on mobile or vice versa. If this cannot be reasonably accomplished, there is a good possibility that the mobile version will be delayed into a future roadmap block. I don’t want to spend too much time on this specific piece for now, as the upcoming March-April block is extremely intensive for codebase changes on both client and server. There are a lot more moving parts, and I genuinely wish I were further along with the updates ahead of that group of features.

Along with the game updates, expect a few changes for update visibility, general website cleanup, and some more “ecosystem” changes to help accommodate providing more information for players on a regular basis. Patch notes for 0.2.1a will be made available as soon as the bug fixes are finalized and all features are confirmed for release. Patch notes for 0.2.2 may be available a bit more ahead of release but are subject to change as some things are ironed out. Thank you for taking the time to read through this. I look forward to continuing to work on and improve this project.