A lot has changed in 6-7 In-a-Row over the past few months, and the latest Playtest build brings together one of the biggest rounds of improvements so far.
The focus has been on making the game feel less like an early development build and much more like a complete multiplayer strategy game: better Online Play, smarter AI, improved settings, more reliable networking, and a substantial pass on power-up balance and UI scaling.
Online Multiplayer is much better
Network Play has received a major overhaul.
You can now:
Host a named game session
Add an optional password to a hosted game
Browse available online games from a dedicated Join screen
Search through active games
Select the session you want to join
Enter a password when joining protected games
The Host and Join flows have also received several UX improvements, including cleaner navigation and better handling of edge cases.
There has been quite a bit of work behind the scenes as well to make multiplayer more reliable.
Several networking bugs were fixed, including an issue where opponent avatars could be missing during the first match but suddenly appear during a rematch.
Another important fix addressed remote players occasionally starting a new game with pieces already present on the board. Board and player state are now properly reset and synchronized when a new match begins.
Smarter AI
The AI has received another significant improvement pass.
It is now better at recognizing when continuing one of its own lines is pointless because that line can no longer realistically reach six.
Defensive play has also improved. The AI is better at recognizing dangerous open-ended threats and deciding which player to block when several opponents are creating problems at the same time.
Hard difficulty has also been improved with deeper lookahead and more strategic behavior, including a greater emphasis on creating opportunities such as forks instead of simply reacting one move at a time.
There is still more AI tuning to come, so feedback on Easy, Medium, and Hard is especially useful.
Power-Ups have been rebalanced
Power-ups continue to evolve.
The latest build includes a full balance pass based on playtesting and observation of how the different bonuses affect matches.
Among the changes:
A new reward condition involving isolated single tokens
Reduced rewards for certain 4-in-a-row and 5-in-a-row situations when the line has no open end
General tuning of the power-up system to make bonuses feel more meaningful without overwhelming the core strategy
This remains one of the areas I expect to keep adjusting as more games are played.
A proper Options menu
The game now has a much more complete settings system.
New options include:
General settings
Audio settings
Video settings
Resolution selection
Fullscreen / Windowed mode
Zoom and pan preferences
Settings are also saved locally, so you shouldn't need to reconfigure everything each time you launch the game.
A few smaller usability issues around the Options screen were fixed as well.
Better support for different screen formats
A substantial UI pass was completed for displays that aren't standard 16:9.
This includes improvements for:
16:10 displays
3:2 / Surface-style resolutions
Player Select
Network Player Select
Other affected menus and layouts
The goal is for the interface to remain readable and properly proportioned across a wider range of displays.
If you are playing at an unusual resolution, I would particularly appreciate screenshots if you notice anything that still looks wrong.
More polish and quality-of-life fixes
A number of smaller improvements also made it into the build.
Zooming and panning are now restricted to actual gameplay, so mouse wheel input should no longer unexpectedly affect the board while navigating menus.
The main screen now displays the game version and build number as well. That may not sound very exciting, but it should make Playtest bug reports much easier to diagnose because we can quickly identify exactly which build was being used.
There have also been additional fixes and validation around Steam integration and packaged builds.
Steam Playtest
One of the biggest milestones since the previous development update has been getting the Playtest workflow fully running through Steam.
Builds can now be distributed directly through Steam, making it much easier to get updates into the hands of testers.
That means the next phase is increasingly about playing real matches, finding the rough edges, and improving the game based on feedback.
What's next?
There is still plenty to work on.
Some of the areas I expect to continue refining include:
AI behavior and difficulty balance
Power-up balance
Online multiplayer reliability and UX
Audio and music
Overall visual polish
Additional playtesting and bug fixing
If you have access to the Playtest, please try the new build and let me know what works, what doesn't, and—most importantly—what isn't fun yet.
Every match helps.
Thanks for following the development of 6-7 In-a-Row and for helping shape the game.
— ViperTKD Games Studio