The Worldboard Weekly

• Frozen players are now removed from a stopped train right away, instead of continuing on to the next station.

• GeoRace
  • The map's POI Explorer now shows everyday points of interest (shops, services, parks, and more), not just transit stops.
  • The matching-region tool now draws the target region's outline on the map.
  • A clear notice appears when every Race tool is unavailable because you're low on cash.
• Photo challenges
  • Fixed photo challenges sometimes failing to detect a subject (like a red car) that was clearly visible in your framed photo.
• Clues
  • Train-line clue help text now adapts to the breadcrumb you've selected.
• Waiting rooms
  • Pre-game waiting rooms — and emailed join links — now survive server updates: you'll see a brief reconnecting notice and rejoin automatically instead of being dropped.
• Live games map
  • GeoRace and Travel Journalist players now appear on the public live-games map alongside other game types.
• Look & feel
  • Each game now shows a per-game release-stage stamp in place of the generic Early Access stamp.

Introducing GeoRace (Alpha)

A race against your friends doing challenges and find the destinations! Everyone starts from the same spot and races through a chain of mystery destinations. The twist: you don't know exactly where each one is. Clues are revealed one at a time, so you'll have to piece them together, buy investigation tools, and earn cash through challenges along the way — all while your rivals close in. First to reach the final destination wins. Play solo as a time trial or race with up to 10 players. It's an early alpha, so expect some rough edges — and tell us everything you think!

Other improvements

• Destination clues now mention the nearby city (e.g. "near Brussels, Belgium")
• Travel Journalist: added a clear indicator when submissions are temporarily paused by the nearby-submissions cap
• Fixed the Start button briefly flashing back to enabled while a new game was being created

Introducing Travel Journalist (Alpha) — our new single-player mode where you play a reporter on assignment for Worldboard Weekly. Your editor has booked you a ticket to Kortrijk, Belgium; where the story goes from there is up to you. Ride real trains and walk the real-world map to visit points of interest, photograph them from different angles, and file magazine entries that get graded (S through C) and paid out in cash — rarer finds and better shots earn more. Keep an eye on the daily Magazine Target region for double payouts, take on Editor Favors between stops for extra income, and browse everything you've filed in your Travel Journal. The best part: standout submissions from all players are published each week in the public Worldboard Weekly magazine (credited or anonymous, your choice in profile settings).

A redesigned dashboard. The home page is now a hub with Solo, Multiplayer, and Saved sections. The find-players board now lives inside the Multiplayer tab, and game start pages support shareable links that pre-select solo or multiplayer play.

Finding players is easier. A new invite board lets you post and join open invites, get notified in the waiting room when someone signs up, and start a game directly from an open invite.

Fairer challenge timers. Timed-challenge deadlines now run on game time and pause while a challenge can't be played (reconnects, redeploys), so you're no longer penalized for time you couldn't use.

Membership updates. The 80x speed-up is now a member perk (free players keep 2x-40x), the transit-window ad now appears for only ~30 seconds per minute instead of the whole ride, and the shop page shows a free-vs-member comparison.

Hide & Seek. The hider can no longer enter a station during the seeking phase, and seeker map overlay glitches (lingering/off-screen highlights) are fixed.

Smoother performance. Eliminated a constant background re-render during gameplay and made map overlays cache smarter — the in-game UI is noticeably smoother, especially on phones.

Fixes. Timetable departure boards match trains more accurately; route clues no longer give away the origin station name; the route finder no longer loses a just-set origin; departure boards recover from failed loads with a retry; failed actions now show an error instead of silently doing nothing (including a trivia popup that could lock itself); you're told when a queued action couldn't apply after a reconnect; the photo popup can no longer mix up quests; the magazine no longer suggests the place you're already challenged to visit; multiplayer games broken by a player quitting are now ended or flagged instead of limping on; creating games in large regions no longer times out; the ticket machine tolerates a failed operator-list load; the geo-guessing result card is centered; long challenge titles no longer overflow; guest display names are far more varied; all Worldboard emails share one branded look.