Building the Table: Dev Diary #1

A quick look behind the curtain for the folks who like to know how the sausage — or in our case, the fish fry — gets made.

Recently shipped

• The iPhone app is real. Bid Whist Forever now runs as a native app — same table, same game, in your pocket. It’s in family testing now, headed for TestFlight.
• Game history. Your profile now shows every finished game — who you played with, the score, your books, your bidding. And during a live hand you can review every book played, card by card.
• Books on the table. Each player’s nameplate now shows their books this hand, and the winning bid stays posted so nobody has to ask “what are we playing again?”
• A smarter economy. Weekly challenges, lucky gem drops on wins, badge payouts, and referral bonuses when you bring family to the table.

What testing taught us

Real testing beats lab testing every time. A stalled bidder bug that never showed on a desktop appeared the moment the game ran on a phone over cellular — and fixing it made the whole game sturdier for everyone.

More soon. The table keeps getting better because people keep sitting down at it.