December has been a good month for addressing feedback, fixing long standing and recent bugs, and assessing the current state of the game and my ultimate goals.

Let's start off with today's build, it's new features, and the bug fixes therein! Stick around till after to read about the extension to Early Access.

Updates and New Features

• Changed the App Icon to something more appropriate for the title (rather than company logo).
  
• We now randomize which team starts the game by default. This behavior can be disabled in the Room Settings by the host, when in the game room lobby.
  
• Added basic app stats to the Matchmaking window. You can now see how many players are online, in matchmaking, and in games. Updates every 5 seconds on average.
  
• Added a warning for manual disconnection via the connection (lightning) icon. Now, accidentally clicking it is safer.
  
• Scene buttons like "Back" and "Leave Game" now made much clearer, availability-wise, with their own buttons.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue where drop-downs and some other controls were being cut/masked and displaying incorrectly because of UI shadows.
  
• Fixed issue where Undo/End-Turn text on the UI buttons in-game were not appearing on wider monitors.
  
• Fixed some issues with games start up, we now ensure the order of operations. As a result, a "Game Starting" screen may now appear briefly as set-up is done.
  
• Fixed an issue where checking and unchecking time limits in the room settings would result in the optional settings remaining locked.
  
• Fixed an issue where Steam Achievements were being granted to both players, if either one achieved them.
  
• Fixed an issue where board tiles were selectable via undo operations, which was allowing players to flip slip tiles back to non-slip.
  
• Fixed tile highlighting in game, so that slip tiles no longer get highlighted on mouse-over (as they should not be interactable, once made slip).
  
• Fixed an issue where the game might auto-win/lose right at the start, by erroneously reporting a player could not make any legal moves.
  
• Fixed an issue with startup, where we were incorrectly trying to flag non-existent tiles as player-owned.
  
• Fixed an issue where player properties were being cleared wholesale at the end of every game.
  

As always, if you find any more issues, please reach out on any of the available channels!

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Year in Summary, and Early Access plans.

I have to say, it has been a GREAT year for Sandwyrm, and Push 3D. At the start of the year, I decided to take this passion project as close to completion as I possibly could, by implementing a policy of "No Zero Days" when it comes to working on it. While I wasn't always successful, the vast majority of the days had Push work in it, and the fact that I am even here, on Steam, pushing out updates, says that I was incredibly successful in achieving what I set out to do.

I want to take a moment to thank all my pre-Steam play-testers. Without your initial feedback and bug reports, I would have been blissfully unaware of many of the insidious problems left in the game (as a Developer, you get used to playing "Debug style" and not actually playing the game as normal. It results in things being missed, sometimes obvious things!). Additionally, thanks to everyone who gave feedback; from UI changes, to how the game feels to play, it has all been invaluable.

Secondly, I want to take a moment to thank you, yes, you, the person reading this article. I appreciate that you are even interested enough to be here, and I want you to know that even if you never touch Push again, it's been really cool to see you, and other users, appear on the Push telemetry dashboards; logging in and out and playing games. Very cool. You've helped me understand what to expect when I release a game on this platform.

Finally, what of the Early Access deadline I set?

Well, when I started the year, the End Of The Year sounded like a fair enough deadline to hit, and seemed like a nice "round number". While it has helped drive me toward completion of the game, releasing on Steam opened up a whole new avenue of feedback and bug reports that I previously didn't have when I just had some friends and family playtesting for me. As such, I feel like the game has a good few features and bug-fixes left to be implemented before I call it "Release Candidate 1.0".

I have therefore decided to extend Early Access until the End of January, 2025.

You may be asking; what's left? Well, to many it may seem obvious, but I will list it here, probably more for my own accountability, than anything else:

1) Leaderboards and Tournaments

• This has actually been in the works for a month now; I'm getting close to something releasable, so this will be sooner rather than later. It would definitely benefit from more time. Once released, you will be able to play online for bragging rights, and see the results in a "Seasons" style champion ship. After that, I plan on potentially allowing user-defined tournaments to be set-up, but that may be a post-1.0 feature.
  

2) Offline Hotseat mode

• The easiest version of 2v2; play with a friend on your local machine (i.e. not online) or perhaps just practice with yourself.
  

3) Basic "vs Computer" behavior for practice games.

• This is potentially a lot more involved, but I would like to see a 2v2 offline match, which offers a bit of challenge from the computer perspective. Its definitely one of the hazier goals left.
  

4) Tutorials

• Much feedback has appeared around things like "Show me the moves that were just made" and "I would love a live tutorial to get the feel of the game" (rather than just reading the game info description. This seems achievable.
  

A month to implement all that still seems a bit tight, so I'm here to say i'll set it live when I think its a decent game, and stands on its own, with a certain quality level I can "feel" is right to me.

As always, thanks for sticking around, and i'll see you in-game sometime!

- Sandwyrm