Card Game Engine Playtest · published
This is a big one, and it covers two updates' worth: the multiplayer work never got its own post, so
it's all here alongside everything since.
This is the headline. Previously a player leaving was, at best, confusing for everyone still sitting
there. Now:
The host decides what happens when someone drops — set it at game setup. A bot takes over
their seat, or everyone waits for them to come back, or the game ends. It's the host's choice and
every player's game follows it, so the table can't disagree with itself.
If a bot takes over, you see the countdown — a banner tells you the seat is waiting for its
player and how long is left before the bot steps in. If the policy is "wait", play pauses and says so
instead of silently hanging.
Drops are visible to everyone, not just the host. From another seat, a bot quietly playing
someone's hand used to be indistinguishable from that person still playing it.
If the HOST leaves, someone else takes over hosting and the game continues. It used to just
stop.
Coming back works. Reconnect while your seat is held and you get your seat back — the same
one, not whichever is free. On a resumed table each seat is held for the player who had it.
Invite friends from inside the game, with an "Invited" list on the table that shows who
you've asked and flips to joined when they arrive. Previously Steam never told us who you'd picked, so
the host had no idea who was coming.
Browse and join open tables without needing an invite at all. Hosts can now choose
Who can join → Anyone; the default is still friends-only, so nothing is listed publicly unless
you opt in.
You can see whose turn it is at a networked table, and what they're doing — "is bidding"
reads very differently from "is playing" when someone is taking a while. Neither guests nor the host
had this readout before.
Everyone at the table hears the same banter, instead of each player getting their own.
End-of-hand results now show for guests while the host is deciding whether to continue.
At a multiplayer table, if someone goes quiet the game now nudges rather than waiting forever. The
host sets the delays at setup, including turning it off entirely. Added for testing — tell us what you think of this one. In Casual and Competitive, a seat that
stalls picks up a bit of light-hearted visual teasing from the other players, cleared the moment they
act. It is cosmetic only: no penalty, no advantage, and nothing that rewards rushing someone. The idea
is that dead time at a card table is where the fun usually drains out, and that a table which reacts to
it beats one that just sits there. Whether that lands or just gets annoying on the fifth hand is
exactly what we want to hear about — it is easy to dial back or drop. Serious mode never shows it.
Some games were quietly playing something slightly different from the game on the box. If you reported
any of these: you were right.
Spades bags never cost anyone anything. Ten bags is supposed to be −100. The count was thrown
away between deals, so it could only ever have fired by taking ten overtricks in a single hand. It now
carries over and wraps properly. Separately, cutthroat Spades kept no bag count at all — at 3, 5
and 6 players, and at 4 if you chose "Play Individually", overtricks were free forever.
Spades at 3, 5 and 6 players was half-teamed when it should be cutthroat — a fifth seat was
being folded into a team's contract. Those tables are now properly every-player-for-themselves, and a
crash that fired on every deal of them is fixed.
Clubs was playing the wrong game. It's meant to let you follow by suit or rank against
a reference card that drifts through the trick; what shipped was plain follow-the-led-suit, stricter and
anchored to the wrong card. The "Match Card" panel now shows the live reference.
Sheepshead's Jack of Diamonds partner was never implemented. It is now — and partners are
resolved from each game's own rules rather than "the seat across from you", which also fixes 500 at five
(whoever holds the called card).
Diamonds: Running Majority is −40 instead of the four +5 suit bonuses, not on top of
them. Sweeping all 13 Diamonds now cancels the Diamonds' own points, Jack of Diamonds included — twelve
at +5 plus the Jack at +15 is exactly the 75 the sweep pays, so the hardest thing in the game used to be
worth nothing. Plus the reviewed ruleset: a third Joker in every deck and three more scoring fixes.
"It was broken but the game wouldn't let me lead one" — one bug, hitting both Diamonds and
Hearts. Fixed.
Sheepshead could reach a state where the game never ended. Fixed. And choosing your discard
after a bury or kitty pickup was throwing an error in Euchre, Sheepshead and 500.
500 at six players scored only one of the two opposing teams.
Experts in Hearts, Elevator, Sheepshead, Clubs and Diamonds now think a whole hand ahead,
simulating the deal to its end and scoring it by that game's own rules. When that was measured
head-to-head it won 56–89% depending on the game. The other games kept the old brain deliberately — it
tested better for them. ⚠ Those measurements predate some of the changes below; see the last section.
Passing had no brain at all. A complete three-tier passing AI had been sitting unused in the
code since the beginning; nothing ever called it. It's wired up, so a beginner passes like a beginner
and an expert stops handing you their high cards.
Hearts: the expert used to throw the Queen of Spades away first when passing — stripping the
exact hand it needed to shoot the moon with. It also no longer leads the Ace of Spades early; its
simulation didn't know hearts can't be led before they're broken.
Diamonds bots stop handing you the hand, and will play for a scoop when they hold one.
The dealer deals to their left and is served last, in the packets the game actually uses — Euchre's
3-2/2-3, 500's 3-kitty-4-kitty-3, Sheepshead's 3-blind-3 — and the felt animates the deal that was
really dealt.
You can turn the sound down. There was no way to do this at all. Lobby footer or the table
menu, because the moment you want it is three tricks in.
Card help — tap a card to see what it does and what it's worth in this game.
On-felt status panels for six games, not just Hearts.
A "How It Works" page explaining the modes and helpers, and full design credit for each game.
Euchre: the card you just picked up is marked while you choose your discard.
Partnership tables counted each side's tricks twice; now once, in the order taken.
Diamonds explains the hand you just played and waits for you to deal the next.
The replay list opens fast even with a lot of saved games, and replays no longer talk over you.
Report a bug from the lobby, not just mid-game.
A new animated opening, and several crash fixes — one of which fired at the end of every completed
game.
Bigger text, the card cursor follows your controller rather than a mouse you don't have, focus returns
to your hand when you close a menu, and the Rules page scrolls. If you played on a Deck before this
build, the entire in-game controller path was broken by a Steam Input mismatch — that's fixed.
A report brings the actual game along — the shuffle and every decision in it — so it can be replayed
exactly rather than reconstructed from a description. If you attach a screenshot, player names are
replaced with P1–P6 before the picture is taken, so they were never in the image. Reports stay
anonymous. Several fixes above came from reports where the attached game was the thing that settled it. Also:
running a Playtest or development build no longer writes to your real Steam achievements.
Being straight about this, because a beta is the wrong place to pretend otherwise. The bot changes
above are real fixes, but several of them have not been through the head-to-head testing that
set the difficulty levels in the first place.
Bot difficulty is genuinely unmeasured at the moment. Passing, the Hearts moon play and the
Hearts card choice all changed in this build, and none of it has been tested head-to-head against the
version it replaced. Expert may now be harder than it was, or easier. If a difficulty level feels wrong
to you — Hearts especially — that is a genuinely useful thing to report.
The Clubs expert's rating is out of date. It was measured while Clubs was enforcing the wrong
follow rule, so the number simply doesn't describe the game it now plays.
Sheepshead and 500 partner play was measured while the bots were cooperating with the wrong
seat. It should be better now that partners are resolved properly. "Should be" — not confirmed.
5-player Spades and 6-player 500 with only bots may never finish — they bid too cautiously
for those table sizes and nobody reaches the target. Fine with a human at the table.
Most of the multiplayer work is verified by automated testing, not yet by a real game with
several accounts. Drops, host handover and reconnection especially. If one of those goes wrong on
you, that report is worth more than anything else you could send us.
The Steam Deck fixes in this build are unverified on actual hardware. They address reported
problems, but nobody has yet confirmed them on a Deck.