What's New

• Through the Ages now tells you up front which year counts for a building: the year the outside you see was first built. A faithful rebuild keeps the old year; a rebuild in a new style takes the new year.

• Challenges are played within the game: challenges are designed to be played without outside help, and the game now says so plainly. Before you pick a challenge, its card lists the steps for its tier, with the game's real counts and time limit and what wins or fails it. For each step it also says whether outside help is discouraged (“Best played with only what the game shows you.”) or not allowed (“No outside help: using it is cheating.”).
• The rules match the cards: the rules' line “Google Maps and web searches are fine” still holds outside challenges, but no longer inside them, where each card says what it allows.
• League players: the round you are playing now keeps the rules it opened with, so Google Maps and web searches stay fine in its challenges, whatever the cards say. The new rules start with the next round.
• Freezes: a lost challenge's result now says how long you are frozen. A frozen GeoRace player can still bid in a curse-card auction, use their quest tools, send coins to a playmate, and buy clues and power-ups; everything else waits until the freeze ends. This fixes auctions that stalled, holding every player's speed-up, when a frozen player could not bid.
• Overlapping map markers: hovering over markers that overlap spreads them into a strip just below them, so you can open any one. Clicking an opponent who stands on a station now opens the station.
• Highlighted map areas, such as a Walking Tour region, are easier to see on the map: a thin dark outline and a stronger fill.
• The new look reaches more pages: sign-in, your profile, notifications and friends, a game's board, Worldboard News and What's New, the shop, the legal pages, the game intro pages, tournaments, leagues, and game and tournament replays.
• Fixes:
  • A notification settings card that failed to load no longer shows default settings that would overwrite your saved choices if you pressed Save.
  • The shop waits for your membership to load instead of briefly telling members "You're not a member yet.", and the weeks field keeps what you type.
  • New release notes appear on What's New right away.
  • Cut-scene credits show in full, the question history shows a short history in full and says when it scrolls, and the hand count reads "1 card in hand".
  • The Map/Satellite switch has moved to the map's bottom-right corner.

• Departure boards, ticket machines, station timetables and the route finder now show trains at their timetabled times on the day the clocks change. When the clocks went back, trains could appear an hour early and already departed, leaving some ticket machines with nothing to book.

• A new look across every game: the clock bar, maps and markers, dialogs, panels, cards, photos, ticket office, platform and game-over screens now share one consistent design, as do the home pages, start pages, the Open Playtimes board and the waiting room.
• Refused moves explained in one place: when a move isn't allowed, a short notice under the clock says what was refused and why. "Something went wrong" now appears only for real failures.
• GeoRace challenges stand on the map: challenge points appear around you as you walk. Walk up to one to start its challenge. Calling for a challenge pick is retired in GeoRace. Points fade out when the map is zoomed out wide, and players are drawn above them.
• Wanderlusters: editor favors and itinerary offers now stand on the map as points. Walk up to a favor and start it from its card, or start an itinerary at its course's first walk.
• Curse boxes in Street View: curse boxes show as pins on the map and inside Street View. Click one within reach to claim it. Unclaimed boxes now last for a set time instead of being capped.
• Challenges start directly from the action bar and the Challenge tab, without "Ready" pop-ups.
• New challenge: Through the Ages: walk to a few unnamed buildings nearby, take a good look at each one, and build their timeline as you go, placing each building by eye against the clock. The final screen shows the true order, with each building's date. It appears where buildings with known dates are nearby.
• Power-up shop in GeoRace, Tag and Wanderlusters: two new power-ups, Hot Soup, which clears your fatigue at once, and Triple Espresso, which makes you walk faster for a while. Tag's own power-ups have moved into the same shop. Each power-up has a cooldown after purchase, and each player gets their own purchase message.
• Coins: the currency is called coins everywhere.
• Hide & Seek: two new cut scenes for the hider, when a question is asked and when the seeker enters the zone.
• Map cards open toward the open side of the screen, clear of the HUD, and a card that pans the map no longer gets pulled back to your player.
• Expanded transit coverage: new or refreshed timetables for Bulgaria (including Sofia), Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia (including Liepāja), Lithuania, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia (including Bratislava's trams) and Türkiye.
• Fixes:
  • GeoRace's game-over board shows a tournament or league run's finishing time with rest deducted, matching the rankings.
  • Preset start times land on the configured weekday across a clock change.
  • Train departure lookups use the operator's own time zone and handle clock changes correctly.
  • A Hide & Seek seeker who can't walk is no longer told "Can't walk there" when the game loads.

• Snapshot Hunt goes local. Snapshot Hunt now asks for things that belong to the country you're playing in: a torii gate in Japan, a red post box in the UK, a pharmacy's green cross in France. Each challenge mixes a few of these in with the usual subjects. Tap or hover a local subject to see a short description and a photo of it. Churches are now only asked for in European countries.
• Train and taxi fixes
  • Boarding now closes 3 seconds before departure, with a clear "Boarding closed" message.
  • Fixed a case where you couldn't board a train at certain stations.
  • Arriving by train or taxi now reliably gets you off automatically, even if the first try is missed. You can also get out of a taxi while frozen.
  • A rest can no longer start while a disconnected player is still on a train, which could leave them stranded.
  • An armed Auto-Board is no longer lost if the game is saved and resumed just as boarding opens.

• Train arrivals play out in real time. During a speed-up, the clock now slows as a train approaches your platform or your destination. It runs at normal speed while the train arrives, while you board and while you get off, so you see each moment. The speed-up then resumes on its own.
• Change Destination closes just before arrival. You can no longer change your destination in the last few seconds before your train arrives.
• Geo Guess results explain every round. The result card now marks each round as correct, wrong or unanswered, and shows how many correct rounds you needed. When you lose a challenge, it also says whether time ran out or you gave up.
• Curse card auction results. The winner now sees "You won …", and every other player sees who won the card.
• Drag fixes. Dragging a Postcard Match postcard, the replay scrubber, the map or a photo now ends cleanly when you let go. This holds even on a Mac trackpad, and when you release outside the item.

• Ticket prices in the route finder. The scheduled view shows each ride's price and the journey's total. It is the same price you pay when you buy the ticket.
• Challenges
  • Challenges that send you somewhere now look for a target close by first, so there is less walking.
  • Rewards combine how well you did with how far the challenge sent you. The reward screen shows a new distance rank, and top ranks pay more.
  • Field Trip Trivia: the site's text is now a short read of up to 200 words, and the questions come from that text alone. The reveal shows the right answer to every question you missed.
  • Postcard Match picks sites spread more evenly around you, so one distant site no longer squeezes the others together on the board.
• GeoRace. Finishing a destination no longer opens the Events panel on its own. The feed now says you completed the destination rather than photographed it, since a curated walk can complete it too.
• Worldboard News on Discord. News posts now also appear in our Discord announcements channel.
• Fixes
  • Timed challenges (Field Trip Trivia, Postcard Match, Retrace Your Steps) now start only on the street. Starting one in a station could freeze it until its clock ran out.
  • A rest now always ends on time, including after everyone disconnects or the server restarts. Before, returning players could be left unable to act until the rest's time had passed.
  • Animated cut scenes no longer look stretched.

• Train arrivals: a sped-up ride now returns to normal speed 3 seconds before you arrive, and a short scene plays as your train pulls into your destination.
• Cut scenes: the train-stopping scene now ends as the train stops, and every scene plays at its full length and in its own shape instead of being sped up or cropped.
• Steadier routes: if our map provider has a brief hiccup, the game tries again instead of failing your taxi, walk or route question. Train lines that were drawn as straight lines get their real track the next time they are ridden.
• GeoRace tutorial: the how-to-play video is now in "How a race works", on the GeoRace page and on your GeoRace home.
• Instagram: follow @worldboard.games from the link in the header and footer.

• Worldboard News: a new News section with our latest posts and release highlights, each on its own page. The weekly magazine now opens with that week's News.
• Walking
  • Auto-walk keeps a natural pace on densely photographed paths such as parks and palace grounds, and the camera no longer seems to climb.
  • Leaving a station opens straight onto the street outside, with no flash of the last street you walked.
  • The walk offer's "Take the walk" button stays in view, and photos keep their space while loading, so nothing jumps around.
• More accurate transit
  • Stations served only by trains that never run no longer appear in search, on the map or in the start pickers.
  • Clues no longer point to cities you can only reach on trains that never run.
• Field Trips: dossiers open with the article itself, not Wikipedia's maintenance notices.
• Fixes
  • Starting a Race no longer fails when Google's map service has a brief hiccup.
  • During a speed-up, the feed no longer posts "Speed-up resumed" then "Speed-up paused" again for a pause that never lifted.
  • The time zone you pick in the board's time converter, and the start time in the invite form, are no longer overwritten as they open.
  • If you follow a link to a game's start page while signed out, you come back to that same link after signing in.
  • /japanorama now shows the new Region Claiming Japanorama trailer.
• Community links: Discord now comes first, we've added our YouTube channel, and the X link is gone.

• Region lock: a train or ferry whose line zigzags across a prefecture border is no longer refused when you ride into a neighbouring locked region. Shinkansen rides like Kumamoto to Kurume and Hiroshima to Okayama now go through.
• Train display: it now reads "ARRIVED" when you reach your final destination, instead of "STOPPED".

• Transit speed-ups now end exactly when your train arrives, instead of dropping back to normal speed up to a minute early. On a platform they stop right at the departure's last call, so you still have time to cancel boarding.
• Tapping quickly can no longer start two overlapping actions, such as buying two tickets at once.
• The Japanorama page now features the new Region Claiming Japanorama tournament, where you unlock Japan prefecture by prefecture. Its Enter button takes you straight to the tournament.

• The Ongoing Tournaments panel on the GeoRace home now fits its card: each tournament's name, schedule and details use the full width, with the Join button underneath.

• A new front page: the home screen now has one card per game, plus Multiplayer and Saved Games cards that preview the lobby's open playtimes and tournaments.
• Every game has its own home: Hide & Seek, Tag and Wanderlusters now have their own pages, as GeoRace already does. Each shows how the game works, its start options, your saved games, and its open multiplayer playtimes.
• Travel Journalist is now Wanderlusters: same game, new name. It has a new home page with the latest Worldboard Weekly issue.
• Street View fix: clicking forward in Street View no longer sometimes sends you backwards.
• Auto-walk loading: while your walking route loads, you now see your own street view behind the loading card instead of a blank screen.
• Postcard Match fix: an open name picker no longer freezes the board. Your next drag or tap simply closes it.
• Tournament pages show the full cover image at full width.
• GeoRace home: the curated courses list uses the same compact cards as the Featured row.
• Postcard Match Challenge: Increase the payout amount to match the time needed for completing the challenge.

• GeoRace clue shop: walking into a station now opens new clue sets as well, not only arriving by train.
• New GeoRace trailer: the GeoRace page has a new captioned trailer that shows the clue shop during a race.

• The GeoRace home is easier to browse. The curated courses panel is now one card that shows every course with its full description, and "Load more" pages through longer lists. The tournaments panel uses the same layout.
• The GeoRace page now describes the clue shop. You buy a few clues, set off on a hunch, and open more as you get off trains closer to the destination. Each tool is used once per destination at a flat price.
• Start pages show the Rules step only when there is a real choice of rule sets. Solo GeoRace time trials skip it.
• Better rail data in Spain: 14 Renfe long-distance stops that sat away from their stations now sit at the station, including Medina del Campo AV and Antequera AV.

• Photos now open in one full-screen viewer everywhere. Unfortunately we have to stop displaying photo thumbnails due to high API cost.
• Hide & Seek hiders answer a photo question by picking one whole candidate photo. There's no more cropping.
• The magazine's photos and maps are now live Google Street View and Maps views.
• GeoRace: a new Destination Map button opens your map, with your tools in its tray. Clues and tools now appear in one list, in the order your team got them.
• The Events drawer shows the newest event, and "All events" opens the full list.
• "I Am Stuck" now offers a Long Hop instead of Unstuck Me.
• If a walk step is refused, you snap back to your real position with a short note explaining why.
• Rail and ferry stations show up on the map from further out, and a badge shows while the map loads.
• Challenges no longer send you somewhere a challenge already sent you, or where your quest is headed.
• New challenge: Retrace Your Steps. Take a nearby curated walk, then put its waypoints back in order against the clock.
• A new Leagues page lists every GeoRace league and where you race in each. League notices and round names now name their league.
• The Featured Games carousel has shorter cards, two rows on the hub, and hover arrows.
• More transit coverage:
  • Japan: 858 more stations
  • Italy: more regional lines, Sardinia's official feeds, and the Sorrento, Gulf of Salerno and Bay of Naples island ferries
  • UK: all national rail from Network Rail's timetable, plus trams, metros and Scottish ferries
  • Spain: previously unserved lines, and Mallorca's trains

• Named rule sets. Every game now plays under a named rule set. The rules link in the game HUD shows its name, currently "Fair Play", and the rules popup lists its rules first. When a preset offers a choice of rule sets, the start page gains a Rules step, and your chosen set is shown again as the game starts.
• Direction clues state their wedge. A direction clue card now says how wide its wedge is, for example "East (22.5° wedge)".
• Snapshot Hunt has more subjects. Six new categories: a bench, a flag, a bakery, a bank or ATM, a construction site, and a hospital or clinic. Every difficulty tier now hands out one more category while the number needed to win stays the same, so one more can go uncovered.

• Field Trip quizzes are rebuilt. Questions now reward reading the site's story, answer options are shuffled, and the quiz shows the site's photo instead of its name. Sites where a quiz doesn't belong (such as memorials) no longer get one.
• Postcard Match improvements:
  • 6 seconds per site, up from 4, and the time limit is shown both before and after you pick the challenge.
  • Larger postcards in a panel on the left, and postcards now appear on their pins in the result.
  • When time runs out the board locks at 0.0 s instead of disappearing.
  • The name picker always stays on screen.
• Landmark photo clues no longer repeat a landmark or show the target itself, and everyone playing the same League leg gets the same clues.
• Challenge messages in the event feed and replays now use the challenge's real name, such as "Postcard Match" or "Walking Tour".
• Expanded transit coverage: the Toyama city tram in Japan.
• New Geodetective setting A new GeoRace setting tailored towards the style of game play without any restrictions on external tool usages. This is an experimental setting, please help us test it and provide feedback. A tournament just started with this setting: https://worldboard.games/tournaments/36701413-bfd7-40c1-8629-5ce1584ccf34

• New challenge: Postcard Match. Visit a set of nearby landmarks and read about each one when you arrive, then match their postcards to their pins on the map against the clock.
• Travel Journalist:
  • The Test Itinerary: walk a curated course leg by leg, review each walk, and earn coins by its length.
  • A finished itinerary now stays in your Travel Journal, with every walk beside your feedback.
  • Task offers now follow what you are doing in the game instead of arriving on a timer.
  • An accepted challenge's target is now pinned on your map.
• Challenges (Tag and Race):
  • Only challenges that can be played where you are standing are offered.
  • If you had hidden the top-right panel, it slides back out when a challenge is assigned.
  • Find & Frame now uses only photos checked to be clear outdoor pictures of the place.
  • Field Trip sites and quest targets no longer need a photo, so more places can be picked.
• Maps: stations are always shown on the map, with a menu when you hover over one. The station timetable now lists each departure once.
• Rules: reverse image search is not allowed, and we strongly encourage players not to use Google Street View outside the game.
• Expanded transit coverage:
  • Italy: trams and urban rail in Turin, Palermo, Florence, Venice-Mestre, Messina, Brescia, Bergamo, Padua and Trieste, plus the Circumvesuviana out of Naples and the train to Ostia.
  • Japan: rail in Ise-Shima, western Yamaguchi and the Niigata plain; the Tsurugi and Hayate Shinkansen services; and Shinkansen services no longer appear a second time as ordinary trains.
• GeoRace: the Featured Games row now leads the home page, game names on start cards link to their intro pages, tournaments show the cover of the course they were built from, and featured covers display at 16:9.
• Fixed: "Surprise me" no longer offers a hub where a game cannot start.

• Featured Games: a new Featured Games row on the home, Solo and GeoRace pages shows the league, tournaments and curated courses worth playing right now, and visitors can see what's on before signing in.
  • A featured course you have a paused solo run on now offers "Continue your run".
  • On the GeoRace page, the full lists of open tournaments and curated courses now sit in collapsible panels.
• Message boards for multiplayer games: every multiplayer game now has its own message board, one click from its dashboard card. Post and quote-reply, @-mention a player (or @all) to notify them, share a time that every reader sees in their own time zone, and jump straight back into the game.
• Open playtimes: "invites" on the find-players board are now called open playtimes, and their threads gain the same @-mentions and time-zone-aware times as the game boards.
• Station entrances:
  • Many stations that used to be transfer-only now have a street-level entrance, so you can step out there. The entrance search looks farther and sees past user-uploaded photo spheres.
  • A station entrance whose street imagery has changed now repairs itself.
  • Station Photo clues now work at large stations too, anchored at the station's entrance.
  • About 400 large stations now have their building outline on the map, so entering one means being at its entrance or within about 50 m of the building, rather than anywhere within 275 m of the station's center.
• Expanded transit coverage in Japan: the Kisei Main Line (Wakayama to Shingu) and the Tsugaru Railway are now in the game.
• Curated walks: finishing a curated walk now shows a closing summary with its cover photo and the stops you visited, and the walk ends when you close it.
• GeoRace destination map: the Area clue's coordinates now open the destination map, and a small possible area is framed on its own instead of shrinking to a dot.
• One game at a time: opening a second game while you're playing another now explains why it can't load instead of loading forever, and other load problems show a message too.
• Smaller fixes:
  • Dragging the replay map is no longer interrupted by the follow camera.
  • Course covers on the course start page now show at full 16:9.
  • Registration and your profile now say that your display name is visible to other players.

• Quests now open with their first clue set. A new quest arrives with its target photo and a distance band already revealed, instead of the game handing out a fixed opening. Travel Journalist quests gain the distance band they never had, and every later clue keeps the timing it had before.
• Distance clues can report a proportional band. A band can now scale with the distance it describes rather than a fixed step, so far-off targets read in sensible round numbers.
• The destination map opens on courses even with tools disabled. Races whose preset offers no tools still have a map worth opening — the row into it is back on every active destination, now named "Possible area", and start points are drawn as pins.
• A course-locked start page is simpler. Choosing a featured course takes you straight to a solo run, and the start page shows the course card alone with its cover full width.

• Expanded transit coverage in western Japan. The Toyooka–Tottori San'in coast is now in the game:
  • Kinosaki Onsen, Takeno, Kasumi, Hamasaka and Iwami are reachable and selectable.
  • The Kounotori and Hamakaze services run their real routes along the coast.
  • The Kyoto Tango Railway gained Shōtenkyō, Yūhigaura-Kitsu-onsen, Amino and Mineyama.

• New challenge type: Field Trip Trivia. Walk to a pinned must-visit site, read its dossier on arrival for as long as you like, then commit to a closed-book quiz — 1, 2 or 3 questions by difficulty, 12 seconds each. Every answer must be right, and your rank is your mean pace. Available in Tag, Race and Travel Journalist. Site articles now also appear in English where we have a rendering, credited to their source language.
• Call a challenge anywhere on foot. You no longer need to be within 1 km of a station. When a challenge can't be generated, the message now explains that generation often fails more than 3 km from the nearest transit station.
• Route finder improvements
  • Your journey now opens with the walk from where you're standing to the first station.
  • Every time is dated, so a leg after midnight can't be misread as tonight.
  • Every leg's time is printed, and a connection you couldn't actually make is refused rather than offered.
• Hide & Seek: the AI hider now departs at the game's start time. The hider's departure and the start of seeking run off the same clock, so the hider can no longer end up somewhere you couldn't have reached. Preset screens and the solo page now state when the hider departs.
• Running yourself to exhaustion now costs a fatigue point. Short bursts refilled stamina faster than distance built up fatigue, so repeatedly sprinting to exhaustion was a way to keep moving fast indefinitely. Charging fatigue for each exhaustion makes that self-limiting. An honest sprinter who runs out of breath once or twice pays 1–2%.
• Route photos say "toward the target", and the last one tells you how much walk is left after it.

• Hide and Seek: the clock no longer speeds up while the hider is outside the hiding zone.
• Walks:
  • Auto-walk now reaches further when there's a gap in the route, so a walk keeps moving instead of stalling.
  • The auto-walk panel sits above the stamina bar rather than over it.
  • A leg's distance is described as where the next draw aims, not a hard minimum.

• GeoRace League: a settled season's final tables now stay on league home for good.
• Community GeoRace courses: an optional cover photo; an author-defined preset menu with aliases on the start page; admin-curated courses get a featured section on the hub and GeoRace home with a course-locked start link.
• Auto-walk range extended from 1 km to 3 km.
• Japanorama: a public landing page at worldboard.games/japanorama and play.japanorama.online
• Expanded transit coverage: first ferry coverage in Japan (22 operators, 86 ports); corrected stop order on 29 OSM-generated regional feeds.
• Hide & Seek: after the game-over reveal, View Map shows where the hider was.
• GeoRace clues: the connected-city clue now uses rail connections, and a clue set with nothing to reveal no longer consumes a reveal.
• Photo challenges: validation is bounded so the submit button no longer hangs past the deadline.
• Auto speed-up is now a per-game preference, starting off in every game.
• Replay viewer camera frames one zoom level out so players stay in frame.
• Preset tier names and order are consistent everywhere.
• Emails now arrive from "Worldboard" rather than "info".
• New Content Creator program page. If you make videos, streams or podcasts about Worldboard, there is now a page explaining what we offer creators — free membership, direct support, a say in what gets built, and channel promotion in the in-game transit window. Linked from the site footer.

• New Content Creator program page. If you make videos, streams or podcasts about Worldboard, there is now a page explaining what we offer creators — free membership, direct support, a say in what gets built, and channel promotion in the in-game transit window. Linked from the site footer.

• The GeoRace League is open
  • A ladder of divisions raced over a season. Where you finish in your division's season table is what moves you up or down for the next one.
  • Everyone starts in the entry division, and entering a round is how you join — there is no sign-up.
  • Your best rounds count and your worst one is dropped, so missing a round costs you nothing as long as you race the others.
• A home for GeoRace
  • A public intro page at /georace explains the mode, with four short gameplay videos
  • A signed-in GeoRace home gathers your races, your saved games, and your standing in the League
  • GeoRace now leads the tabs on your dashboard
• Past tournaments
  • A new Past tournaments page collects every concluded tournament and its results
  • The lobby's Tournaments section now appears only while a tournament is recent
• Fewer duplicate departures: a long clean-up pass across dozens of transit feeds means the same train no longer fills a station's board several times over
• Clearer Tag and Hide & Seek pages: both public rules pages were rewritten to match how the games actually play
• Bigger station photos and videos: pick a station photo up to 4 MB and a video up to 50 MB; photos are resized in your browser before uploading
• Fixes
  • Travel Journalist quest chains no longer send you to a destination the same chain already uses
  • Fixed a failure that could prevent a game from starting when a quest location sat beside a Street View photo sphere

• Community GeoRace courses — Build your own GeoRace course and share it: pick a community course from the start page when creating a game, and create tournaments directly from a community course.
• Fatigue — Long walks now tire you out: covering a lot of ground since your last rest gradually lowers your max walk speed, and resting restores it. Voluntary rests now last at least 6 hours. In GeoRace, the rest cooldown now applies only in tournaments that deduct rest time from your run.
• GeoRace: nightly clue pause — New clues stop being released during your local nighttime (9pm–6am by default), so you don't have to stay up to keep pace.
• Travel Journalist journal — The submission list now shows a compact photo-count chip instead of thumbnail strips; full-size photos still open in the detail view. Photos across the game also load faster on repeat views.
• Performance — A major server-side fix removes the lag that built up in long-running Travel Journalist games, and route planning got faster and more reliable.

• Replays pause on the big moments. Playback now stops on key beats — a tag, a clue reveal, a destination reached — with a popup explaining what happened, then resumes on its own or when you hit Resume.
• Tournament replays got a lot better. The standings panel collapses out of the way, clue reveals are stitched into one attributed narrative that follows the race front, and every destination arrival gets its own moment. Concluded tournaments now show a "Watch replay" link right in the lobby.
• Concluded tournaments read as finished. Settled tournaments move into their own "Past tournaments" group with muted titles, past-tense copy, and the medalists named in the row.
• Find & Recreate photos acceptance improved. Standing inside a park, campus, or cathedral close no longer counts as out of range — a photo passes if you are near the access point, on the building footprint, or close to the centre.
• Overnight departures show the right countdown. Boarding times on overnight and cross-timezone trains no longer read a day late.

• Area clues now mean exactly what they show. The circle you see is the real uncertainty: the radius drawn is the radius used, and the target is equally likely to be anywhere inside it. Previously some Area clues drew a wide circle while the target was quietly pinned much closer to the center.
• Quest chains no longer double back. When the next destination in a chain is drawn, it now steers away from the direction you just came from, so a route keeps moving onward instead of ping-ponging between two areas.
• GeoRace destination distance options are now 200, 350, 500 and 750 km (previously 100, 250, 500 and 800 km). Games and presets already using the old distances keep working unchanged.

• Auto Board — Arm a ticket and your train boards itself at departure. No more watching the clock.
• Pick up where you left off — Your last game now has a Continue button on its start card.
• Clearer photo clues — Route photo clues now show how far along the walk each photo was taken, and tapping a thumbnail scrolls straight to it.
• Clues point at the exact spot — Clues are built from a destination's real entrance instead of the building's centre, so following one lands you inside the arrival gate.
• Quests follow your exploring — Travel Journalist quests now appear and reveal clues as you cover new ground rather than on a timer, and a quest stays until you finish it.
• Regional Tour visits — Arriving at a tour spot brings up a card about the place.
• Harder challenges — GeoRace could never offer a hard-tier challenge; now it can, which also puts the top cash rewards in play.
• No repeat landmarks — Find & Recreate won't send you somewhere it already sent you this game.
• Better scenic destinations — Randomly generated Tag maps now favour verified scenic viewpoints, each checked to confirm the view actually repays the trip.
• Lyon schedules corrected — Lyon metro and tram now run their real service hours.
• Photo submissions no longer stall — A slow image fetch during photo validation times out properly.

• Fixed Street View photos failing to appear in saved and resumed games. Images in games that were started before the recent image-loading update now display correctly again.

• Fixed photo display

• Clearer station names: stations that were only called "Hauptbahnhof", "Centraal Station", or "Railway Station" now say which city they're in, so you can tell them apart at a glance.
• See other players on the street: when you and another player in your game are both walking or in a taxi within 75 metres of each other, their avatar now appears in your Street View — in every game mode.
• Tournaments:
  • Finish times stay hidden on a live tournament board until the tournament ends, so the standings don't spoil a run you haven't made yet.
  • Each tournament now sets its own rest rule — rest either comes off your run time or counts toward it — and says which one applies on the tournament page and when you join.
• Magazine: tournament recaps, plus a table of contents.
• Replay map: players standing in the same spot now collapse into a single crowd pin instead of a pile of overlapping markers.
• Tag: you can now tag someone while the train is still waiting at the platform, and a tagger's freeze is shortened by whatever head start the new evader was given.
• Fixes: quitting from the dashboard now warns you when it would end the game for everyone else, and a Street View auto-walk that could get stuck bouncing between two spots now always finishes.

• GeoRace Tournaments — a new way to compete. Browse the open tournaments from the home page: each one shows when it closes, where it starts, how long the course is, and who has already entered. Join with your single attempt, follow the live standings, and when the tournament concludes see the final results board plus a synced replay that plays every entrant's run side by side on one shared race clock.
• Player names on the map — every player marker now carries a name plate, with the full name on hover. Players standing on the same spot merge into one crowd pin instead of hiding behind each other.
• Rename your own team — in the Race waiting room you can rename the team you're on, not just the host. Renaming no longer clears everyone's ready state.
• Direction clues say how wide they are — a direction clue now states its wedge, for example "East (90° wedge)", so a coarse reading can't be mistaken for a precise one.
• Shorter curse-card auctions — the sealed-bid window is now a fixed 5 game-minutes instead of stretching across the card's full spawn interval.
• Fixed — a speed-up vote that had already been settled no longer shows everyone a "System error: No pending speed-up request" message.

• Watch your GeoRace replay — Race games are now recorded. When a race ends, "Watch Replay" plays back the whole run: destinations as they were revealed, radar and thermometer areas, team colours, curses, and the finish.
• Richer replay cards — photo clues now appear in replays, Strava-map pulls render as a route card, and clue cards, map markers and event icons got a readability pass. Tap any card to open it full-size.
• Chat in the waiting room — players can now chat with each other while waiting for a game to start.
• New GeoRace team settings — 4×2 and 5×2 team compositions on the GeoRace start page.
• New photo subject — "a bird" is now a Take Photo subject.

• GeoRace: know what's coming next. The Destination tab now ends your clue list with the next clue's type and a live countdown to its release.
• GeoRace - Pause clock speed-up while a curse-card auction is collecting bids, so everyone gets a fair chance to bid before the window closes.
• GeoRace: rests no longer burn your clue schedule.** Clue releases hold while the group rests and resume on the normal cadence after you wake, instead of dumping the whole ladder at once.
• Faster station departure times. Departure boards at large stations load several times faster, fixing slow loads and timeouts at busy hubs.
• Clearer long countdowns. Timers over an hour now show hours — a hiding period reads 7:00:00 instead of 420:00.

• Tag - Share your replays. Finished games can now be shared with a public link, and you can revoke it at any time.Pin a replay to protect it from automatic cleanup as your library grows.
• Tag: see the play zone. The play zone and the winning zones are now drawn directly on the map.
• Travel Journalist: region coverage. Your submissions now score coverage tiers across regions, shown in a floating journal window with a browsable region tree.
• Travel Journalist: submit freely nearby. The cap on accepting multiple places within a small area is gone.
• Magazine: Feature Highlights. The weekly issue now leads with a highlights section covering what is new.
• Better city clues. City clues now name the city the target is actually in, instead of the nearest city centre.

• Tag Classic Mode — a new option running the classic ruleset: taggers ride all transit for free and cannot call challenges. Only the evader calls challenges.
• Race challenge periods — when selected, challenges can only be called during a recurring open window (default 30 minutes every 2 hours). Rewards are 30% higher to match the scarcer opportunities. This way all players sync their challenge activities together. The aim is to enable a faster pace since players doing challenges slow down players doing transit.
• Departure listings now collapse duplicate departure variants consistently across the departure board, ticket machine, and timetable.
• Invites now show how many spots are left, and cap at 25 sign-ups.
• "Open invite" now refers specifically to a public invite everyone can see; invites in general are now called "game invites".
• Travel Journalist —published magazine submissions now notify the author and award 200 coins.

• Friends
  • Send and accept friend requests, see your friends list, and block someone
  • Post invites visible to friends only, and get notified when a friend posts one
  • A recent playmates card showing the people you have shared the most games with
• Notifications
  • A new in-app inbox: a bell with an unread count and a full notification feed
  • Browser push notifications for invites and waiting-room activity, with a toggle right in the bell popup
  • Per-event preferences so you choose what arrives by email and what by push
• Worldboard Weekly
  • Featured regions and daily picks now publish up to ten entries, with note-carrying submissions ranked first for quality
  • Once a week closes its issue is locked in, so a published entry stays published
  • Featured regions show a zoomed-out locator map beside the region map, so you can see where in the world it sits
  • Entry cards show your note when you wrote one, a Wikipedia summary when you did not, and always link to the full article
• GeoRace
  • The curse list in the rules is now collapsible
  • When no cluster hosts a box, the curse card goes to auction instead
• Challenges
  • Regional Tour difficulty now tracks how far the target region is, and easy and medium tours stay closer to home
• Profile
  • Display names are capped at 32 characters

• Easier to find a game. When you post an open invite on the player finder, it's now automatically shared to our Discord find-a-player channel — so more players can spot your game and jump in.
• Fairer curse boxes in team games. A spot crowded with only one team no longer spawns a curse box that nobody there could use, and teams can no longer pad a group's size to sway where the next box appears.
• A curated Worldboard Weekly. Each featured region and day now highlights a hand-picked set of the best travel entries (marked with a "Selected" badge), favoring one entry per player so no single traveler dominates an issue. The featured-story map now zooms to the story's actual region instead of the whole continent.
• Reliable game creation everywhere. Fixed an issue where starting a game from certain regions (such as Frankfurt) could fail with a timeout during setup — game creation is now fast and reliable regardless of starting region.

• Curse card boxes now spawn around where players actually are, so they show up near the action — and they have a new treasure-chest marker on the map.
• The in-game chat panel now docks cleanly against the right edge of the screen, above the HUD, with a collapsible toggle tucked into the edge. Fullscreen map tools were repositioned so the chat no longer overlaps them.
• Improved database connection resilience to prevent rare transit lookup hiccups after idle periods.

• Fixed a bug that hid many scheduled trains in several regions — including Norway (Oslo Airport), Czechia, Dijon, Bordeaux, Irish Rail, Nice, Germany, and Slovenia. These trains now appear correctly in departure boards, timetables, and route finding.
• Route-based clues now measure distance along the actual route instead of straight-line distance, making them more accurate.
• Fixed a bug where quest clue reveals could stall permanently in GeoRace and Travel Journalist games.
• The GeoRace map now shows additional point-of-interest categories.
• The in-game chat panel has moved to the left edge of the screen.

• GeoRace: hovering a tool in the tools menu now shows its price, price escalation, and cooldown up front — so you can weigh a tool before selecting it.
• Quests: revealed photo clues no longer repeat a Street View shot you've already seen — every reveal shows something new.
• Easier to learn the games: Hide & Seek and Tag now have "Learn more" links on their start cards and the home page, linking to a full explanation of each mode.
• More reliable start page: fixed an issue where the starting-location map could appear empty ("no starting locations"); it now loads reliably and offers a Retry if something goes wrong.

• New public intro pages for Hide & Seek and Tag, so you can share what the games are about — and sign-ups drop you right back where you started
• Take Photo challenge: photos can no longer be reused across challenges, and a 1 km radius now governs rank scoring
• Geo-guessing: rank bands rebalanced so higher ranks are easier to reach
• GeoRace now shows the Hide & Seek–style progress bar while a tool resolves
• Speed-up: the custom duration input now sits right next to the confirm/cancel buttons
• Travel Journalist: the word "magazine" in the solo card now links to the magazine

GeoRace

• Every race quest now starts with a baseline distance clue, giving you a sense of how far the target is.
• Curse durations have been retuned for better balance, and the oldest curse box is now recycled when the map is full instead of skipping the new one.

Hide & Seek

• The hider's avatar appears in StreetView once you're within 75m. The find radius has been tightened to 25m.

Transit & tickets

• You'll now see a warning when buying a ticket to a transit-only destination you can't reach on foot.
• Added a manual "speed up to arrival" option while you're boarded and waiting to depart.

Magazine

• The Magazine is now front-and-center in the main navigation, with a new weekly release-notes section.

Fixes

• Fixed a compatibility issue on older browsers that could block game creation.

• Team play comes to GeoRace: pick your team composition right on the start page when you set up a GeoRace, and tool prices now scale with team size for balanced play.
• GeoRace: economy was tuned such that less challenge grinding is needed. Long distance trains are significantly cheaper.
• Curses arrive in GeoRace — play curse cards to sabotage your rivals with some new curses:
  • Frozen Solid: freezes a target in place for 5–15 minutes
  • Tourist Prices: hits a target with +50% transit costs for 45 minutes
  • Pickpocket: instantly steals 40% of a target's cash
  • Curse cards now play a video notification when they land
• Travel Journalist: your first quest now arrives faster, and a new hint helps you find markers when you haven't made any submissions yet.
• Hide & Seek: tidied up the start-screen copy.

• Fixed a bug where a quest's photo clue could get stuck on the loading placeholder and never display the image.

• GeoRace (Alpha)
  • New start options: choose the number of legs and how far the destination sits.
• Clues
  • Photo-based clues now render noticeably sharper.
  • Quest photo clues now blur giveaway text, so signage in the target photo won't hand you the answer.
• Map
  • The timetable explorer has a new time-of-day filter to narrow departures to a chosen window.
  • The minimap now auto-hides Street View coverage shading when you zoom out, reducing clutter.
• **Travel Journalist (Alpha) **
  • The solo start button is now "Start a Career".
• Reliability
  • Auto-walk and the taxi ride now correctly pause while your game is paused for reconnect, instead of drifting on while you are offline.

• 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.

• Tag balancing: reduced ranking multiplier
• A cleaner challenge interface — challenge details are now unified into a single tabbed panel.

• The Take Photo challenge has six new subjects to hunt for and snap: a blue car, a red car, a supermarket, a pharmacy, a flower, and a balcony.
• Each subject category now counts up to two photos. Building your photo score rewards finding a wider mix of subjects instead of repeating the same one.

• The night curfew (forced rest) no longer cancels a challenge you're already doing. Solve-in-place challenges like trivia and geo-guessing can be finished while resting, and movement-based challenges now carry over and resume the next morning when the curfew lifts.
• Same-train tags are more reliable. You can now tag another player riding the same train even if you boarded at different stations — staying close together on board for a couple of minutes counts as being on the same train.

• Tag now has resting period 21:00 – 06:00 local: Ongoing challenges will be automatically vetoed at 21:00. Cannot take trains whose arrivals will be in the resting period. User initiates "Rest Until Morning"

• Worldboard is now free to play. Game Credits are now Membership Credits (1 credit = 1 week of membership); your existing balance is preserved, and memberships can be bought or redeemed in the Shop.
• Steadier connections. Brief network hiccups no longer interrupt your game — a short drop reconnects silently instead of flashing a "reconnecting" overlay or pausing the clock.
• Change your destination mid-trip. While riding transit you can now shorten or extend your trip to any upcoming stop.
• Faster route planning. The in-game route finder returns results more quickly.
• Expanded ferry coverage in Italy. Added more Italian ferry routes — the Bay of Naples, the Sicilian and Sardinian island connections, and the Italian lakes.

Tag Gameplay

• Clearer photo submissions. Submitted photos now appear as compact thumbnails that expand to a full-size view when tapped.
• Sharper place labels. Target categories read as natural-language lines (e.g. "A bakery in Ixelles"), and category names now pluralize correctly across the map, POI Explorer, and seeker preview.
• Freeze reliably freezes you. Being frozen now fully stops movement — fixed cases where a frozen player could still walk or kept moving after resting.

• Fixed a bug where automatic walking could teleport you to a remote station

• Route finder: Fixed cases where it wrongly reported "no route" for trips that are actually reachable. It now also surfaces daytime itineraries and clearly labels departures that leave the next day.
• General Gameplay: A speed-up forced on a frozen player no longer runs longer than it should — it now ends when that player thaws.
• Clearer clue photos: Street View clue images are no longer enlarged beyond their native resolution in the expanded viewer, so they stay sharp.
• Waiting room: Fixed a misleading "waiting for N more players" message that could appear even after enough players had joined.

Route finder & timetable

• Schedule-aware route finder: journeys validated against real timetables with actual departure/arrival times — now the default, with per-leg operator names, a departure date/time picker, and a map preview.
• Cleaner station timetable: near-duplicate line variants merged; lines with no service today hidden.
• Station search loads more results as you scroll.
• More reliable route-finder loading on certain devices and networks.

Clock speed-ups

• Hands-free "Auto" mode requests and approves speed-ups while you wait on a train or for a ticketed departure; speed-ups never run past your own arrival/departure.
• Dial a requested speed-up down to a lower speed or shorter duration before approving.
• Frozen players can now initiate a speed-up vote.
• A vote auto-declines after 60 seconds if co-players don't respond.

Quality of life & fixes

• Chat no longer auto-hides while you type, and stays usable during a reconnect pause.
• The event log records every event; only drawer-only events pop it open.
• Fixed a Geo-Guessing hang when losing below the win threshold.
• Short taxi rides now cost at least 10 coins.
• Faster dashboard load.

Tag gameplay

• Steeper high-speed-train premium for evaders — fast trains cost progressively more.
• Tagger challenge rewards are slightly discounted so cheap transit and full rewards don't stack.
• You can now tag a co-located evader at a station even when one of you is at the entrance and the other in the lobby (within 25 m).
• You can no longer veto a challenge while riding a train or car.

New & revamped challenges

• Find & Recreate — solve clues to track down a mystery landmark, then photograph it to recreate a reference shot; capture more distinct angles for a higher rank and reward.
• Regional Tour — a push-your-luck challenge: hop across neighboring regions collecting a different kind of point-of-interest in each, then bank once you've covered them all.
• Local Trivia — a fast multiple-choice stream mixing local-culture facts, spot-the-local, name-the-place, and order-the-stops; answer accurately, then Stop & bank for a bigger multiplier.
• Geo-Guessing is now multi-round, with a per-round reveal of how close you were, and is offered in regular play.
• Take Photo revamped — you're given a set of subject categories and win by covering enough of them; keep shooting distinct subjects to push your score, then bank.

Challenge experience & rewards

• Smarter picker: the three offered challenges always span easy/medium/hard, it warns when a completed type won't be offered again nearby, and it shows an exact base reward for fixed-difficulty types.
• Live performance-rank coaching in the HUD explains how each type is graded and what it takes to reach the next rank.
• Rewards reveal step by step like a receipt (difficulty → base pay → rank → multiplier → bonus → total), and even a loss shows your tier and grade; per-answer dots fill faster.

Tag

• New challenge types:
  • Order the Stops — tap a rail line's shuffled stops into their correct travel order before time runs out.
  • Recreate the Photo — travel to a nearby landmark and submit your own photo matching a reference shot.
  • Border Hop — reach the neighbouring region shaded on your map and win the moment you set foot inside.
  • Geo-Guessing — study three street scenes and drop a pin on a pannable world map; the closer your guess, the bigger the payout, across ten distance tiers (and far guesses still pay, with no penalty for trying).
• Challenge results now play tailored animated reveals ending in an animated cash payout, and completing a challenge no longer fires two celebrations at once — it's logged as a lasting entry in your event drawer.
• New Taggers-only chat channel (tabs in the chat window) so taggers can plan the chase without the evader reading along; General still reaches everyone.
• A new in-game rules guide pops up the first time you play Tag and reopens any time from the HUD's "?" button.
• Smarter challenge picker — a challenge type you just finished stays out of the picker over a wider area, so you can't farm the same one by barely moving.
• Find-a-place challenges now play a player-filmed visit video of the spot when one exists, or invite you to film and submit your own.

Points of interest & contributors

• Watch contributed videos at interesting points of interest as you visit them, crediting their contributors.
• New contributor profile settings: add a bio and set a profile-wide credit preference.

Maps & transit

• Ferry and cable-car categories added to the fullscreen points-of-interest map.

Hide & Seek

• New in-game rules popup.
• Animated end-of-game result reveal.

Account & dashboard

• Change your email address from account settings.
• Revamped Saved Games: per-type tabs, started-at time, and location.
• Open a knowledge detail view straight from your journal's visited places.

Community

• New "World Contributions" stat on the public live-stats scoreboard.

Gameplay & stability

• Auto-walk polish: smoother cadence, better panorama quality (skips 360° photo spheres), and speed-up now pauses while a player auto-walks; minimap re-centres on you.
• Platform access now requires a ticket departing from your current station.
• Single-player sessions pause when the lone player disconnects.
• Fixed a route-finder crash and an issue where action buttons could stay interactive beneath a map overlay.

• Transit scenes now match the vehicle you're riding — buses, trams, and metros each get fitting platform views, and ferry rides show a sea-view window.
• Platform photos are now picked and validated according to each station's transit type, improving what you see at bus, tram, and ferry stops.
• Station lobbies now credit the players whose videos and photos you're watching.
• Tag challenges have been rebalanced:
  • Spot-the-Local now rewards genuine local knowledge — photo categories and distances are retuned so that being there beats searching the web.
  • The photo-matching challenge draws from more varied place categories, scores on a threshold instead of all-or-nothing, and runs on a visible countdown timer.
• Photo checks keep working during AI provider outages via an automatic backup validator.
• Game maps no longer pop open Google place cards when you tap map icons.

• Expanded Spain high-speed rail coverage: The Ouigo network now reaches far beyond Madrid–Barcelona — connecting Sevilla, Málaga, Valencia, Murcia, Alicante, and Valladolid, with new stops including Córdoba, Zaragoza, and Albacete.
• Fixed Tag deadline finish: When a Tag game hits its time limit with no one having reached their destination, the winner is now correctly decided by whose destination is closest to the evader.

• Cleaner walk screen when movement is paused — When the game temporarily disables movement, the stamina bar and keyboard hints are hidden and replaced with a short note.
• Rebalanced trivia challenge — Trivia challenges are more forgiving: lower correct-answer thresholds on the easier rounds, and no more all-or-nothing rounds where a single wrong answer loses it.
• Rebalanced visit N POIs challenges — These now scale more granularly with distance and can be as small as a single location.

• New Tag challenge — a "match the photo with its name" challenge added to Tag games.

• New Tag challenge — Spot the Local: each round shows several landmark photos, only one of them nearby; pick the local one every round to win.

• More diverse trivia — quiz challenges can now ask questions tied to specific landmarks and points of interest near you.

• Find mysterious place made easier — adjusted to come with more straightforward clues and higher rewards

• Smarter route finder — now accounts for short walking transfers between nearby stations, so trips that require switching between close-but-separate stations are routed correctly.

• Expanded transit coverage

  • Real tram, metro, and funicular networks for 25 French cities — Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes, Nice, Montpellier, Grenoble, and more — backed by real timetables.
  • Direct Ventimiglia → Milano trains along the Italian coast.
  • A new transit link between Lyon Saint-Exupéry airport and central Lyon.
  • Expanded Italian rail coverage — added regional and secondary rail across Emilia-Romagna (Bologna, Ferrara, Reggio Emilia), Trentino (Trento–Malé–Mezzana, Valsugana), and Alto Adige (Vinschgerbahn, Meran–Bozen, Pustertal).
  • Fixed occasional incorrectly-drawn transit route lines on the map.

• The pre-game waiting room now has a scenic photo backdrop.

• Behind-the-scenes performance and stability improvements.

• Automatic walking mode — travel to a destination hands-free:
  • A look-ahead path-finder plans your route and keeps you moving through turns.
  • Removed the blurry images that used to appear while walking in regular Street View.
  • Enlarged minimap with a tap-to-walk popup and a centered player marker.
  • Pause and resume Auto-walk to look around.
• Significantly improved the taxi-ride experience.
• In-game time and dates now display in the game region's local timezone.
• Hide & Seek: the in-map toolbar now displays correctly over the play-view map background.
• More reliable train boarding (fixed a ticket-sync race during auto-advance).
• Clearer on-screen notice if Google Maps fails to load.
• Tag - now system ensures the "mysterious place" is somewhere reachable through streetview.
• Tag - visit N POIs challenge easier to win at each POI
• Expanded transit coverage:
  • Real ferry timetables for UK–Europe crossings.
  • New cross-border rail across South-East Europe, reconnecting Greece and 11 neighbouring countries.
  • Austria's local and regional railways are now reachable, including the Salzkammergut lake region and the branch lines off the main ÖBB network.
  • The London DLR is now correctly classified as a Metro line.
• You can now minimize the central top panel to reclaim screen space — the clock, cash, and menu stay accessible.
• Fullscreen-map tools (walk selection, distance ruler, coverage overlay) now reset when you reopen the map.
• The dashboard no longer shifts your game cards around while your saved games are loading.

• Curse expiry times now display correctly in your local timezone
• More accurate station entrance locations
• Improved reliability of image-based challenges

• New Tag game start page (closed alpha testing only) — pick from available maps when starting a Tag game.
• The speed-up cap has been increased to 480 minutes.
• Improved difficulty scaling when finding points of interest.
• Fixed a client crash during Tag game transitions.
• Fixed Tag challenge checks triggering when they were not available.
• Fixed incorrect wording shown on the Duplicate card.

• Improvements to internal reporting tools so we can respond faster to player-submitted entry-point reports.

• Tag: you can now tag an opponent when you are both at the same station spot.
• Hide & Seek: matching-question feasibility now considers the seeker's hiding-zone guess, leading to more meaningful matching questions.
• Challenge difficulty has been rebalanced to favor taggers
• Improved transit routing accuracy for journeys that cross time zones.

General

• New IMPORTANT event popup that stays on screen until you dismiss it
• Street View visuals cleaned up: isolated photo spheres filtered out, past scenes re-probed instead of dropped
• Platform photo discovery is faster — work is shared across players in the same game and cached when nothing is found
• Cut scene contributions: save per-row drafts, preview, and finalize before submitting
• Station photo contributions: tighter rules and clearer admin visibility; CC / public-domain option removed
• Cut scene contribution nudges only appear for stations in the catalog

Hide and Seek Fixes

• Region questions resolve against an ordered list of admin levels for more accurate answers
• Each question type now shows plain-language help text
• Matching-question area warnings are written for players, not engineers
• Hide & Seek: Voronoi cells render more precisely near boundary lines
• Clearer wording for the Bonus Draws curse

Tag (closed alpha testing only)

• Tagger will get a cash bonus based on the distance of the stray tagger from the tag.
• Stray tagger will get extended freeze period based on the distance between them and the tag
• Tagging now works between players on the same train, and frozen train riders auto-exit
• When every player is frozen, anyone can speed up the clock to get unstuck

• Timetable explorer now draws the actual route polyline on the map so you can see the path each line takes.
• Route finder UI improvements: cleaner layout, deduplicated results, and consistent polyline rendering.
• Seeker hiding-zone checkbox now snaps to the closest station and persists when the map is closed and reopened.
• AI hider no longer gets stuck when a question can't be randomized to a replacement.
• Fixed a bug in tentacle-zone generation that produced duplicated points of interest in the same category.

• New timetable explorer on the fullscreen map: browse departures, see all stops along each route, and view per-leg pricing
• Tap any leg in the route finder to open a detailed transit-route popup
• Fixed transit pricing so longer trips are never cheaper than shorter ones
• Crowdsourcing: Wikimedia photos now appear during station-photo uploads, with clearer Creative Commons licensing options

• Tag mode: photo challenges now enforce a maximum distance based on POI rarity, measured from where the challenge was called.
• Tag mode: completed challenges can no longer be redone while you are still within 1.5 km of where you called them.
• Richer trivia: the question bank has been expanded to 15 questions per region (up from 5) for more variety.

• Found POI popup is now properly sized when there's no photo, and is hidden entirely when there's neither a photo nor a backstory to show
• findNPOIs challenge HUD now displays readable category names (e.g. "Movie Theater") instead of raw enum codes
• Evaders can now see tagger markers on the map when the Tracker on Tagger power-up is active

• Hosts can now End Game directly from a shelved card.\n- Completed hide-and-seek sessions now appear correctly in your profile stats.

New Features

• Your Hide & Seek game stats now appear on the profile page.
• Transit ticket prices are more realistic, and cash inputs use finer-grained steps.
• Rest can no longer be cancelled mid-action — choose your moments to rest carefully.
• Improved transit accuracy across many regions from regenerated GTFS feeds.

Bug Fix

• End game button in multiplayer final popup window fixed

Contributor Rewards Program

• New Hub: contribute station lobby and platform photos, plus cut-scene videos for stations you know
• Earn game credits when your approved crowdsourced contributions go live
• You can submit photos/videos of your own with your owner license, or you can also submit any appropriate ones with Creative Commons / public domain
• See your contribution stats and approval status in your queue
• We now email you when your station-entry suggestion is applied

Hide and Seek Improvements

• New Expanded Zone curse for hiders
• Improved the seeker question bar UI

Bug Fixes

• Hider can now keep cards up to the full keep count when their hand has free slots
• Landing page no longer shakes at certain viewport widths
• Walk scene cleaned up — the lingering "Stuck in a closed space?" hint has been removed

• Improvements to map data and points-of-interest search for a more reliable experience.

• Faster map region loading thanks to pre-computed polygons and 24-hour caching
• Improved stability of map overlays in hide-and-seek games
• Better email notification preferences and unsubscribe handling

• Fixed a crash that could affect seeker exclusion-zone previews for very large regions (e.g. France, Spain).
• Region map previews now load faster and more reliably after recent updates.

• Region boundaries on the map now render faster and more smoothly, especially in admin and game-setup views.

• Buy game credits directly in the new shop
• Train window now shows real photos of areas you're passing through, cycling between regions
• Surprise Me now weights country picks by land area for more geographic variety
• Auto-hider now fans out from your origin when nearby hub options are limited
• When no public rooms are available, you'll be pointed to the Discord find-player channel

• Custom markers: drop personal pins with notes on the map during a session — visible only to you
• Hungary expansion: 18 new regional routes covering Budapest and the rest of the country
• New Animations for hide and seek game events.

• New crowdsource homepag with a new street entrance report page and a duplicated station merge suggestion page so that players can help improve the world.
• Improved Hail Taxi: Now you can go any POI marker within 3km with better visual.
• New Leap button, no more stuck in street view islands.
• Hide & Seek seekers can now restore asked and vetoed questions
• Rewritten curse names and descriptions for a fresher feel
• Metro/Tram category added to the POI picker (with repositioned panel)
• Better POI photos answers: Wikidata photos are blurred with a Street View fallback for photo questions
• Fixed Sevilla Metro Line 1 missing terminal stations
• Better transit data for Slovenia, Czech and Hungary feeds switched to the national Spojenka GTFS
• Fullscreen map auto-dismisses on scene change; double-click the minimap to expand it

New Features

• New Route Finder UI in the fullscreen map, with route shapes displayed
• "Surprise me" starting-location option for hide-and-seek
• Chat: quote-to-reply and message recall
• Revamped WALK: more responsive, with effective speed gated by stamina
• Higher game refresh rate for smoother UI
• New clock speedup: 80x
• Stations are now displayed with city names when applicable
• New matching question: Church and McDonald's (2 km tier); Airport / Amusement Park range extended to 300 km
• Faster, more reliable, and more comprehensive POI lookup
• Expanded transit data: Ukraine added; Hungarian, Romanian, and Taiwanese rail coverage improved
• Per-topic notification settings
• Hide-and-seek start page now displays the playable area
• Smarter AI hider: prioritizes Express Train and randomizes in later phases

Minor UI Improvements

• Several new curated starting locations
• Restyled action buttons with cleaner labels
• Dashboard revamped with real-time session updates
• Taxi meter scales to fit your viewport

Bug Fixes

• Rest cooldown measured from when you start resting; curse time restores if rest is cancelled early

• Improved Bulgaria coverage: Sofia transit uses the official GTFS feed, with BDZ rail fallbacks for intercity routes
• More accurate route display: fixes for polyline overshoot and per-segment OSM matching produce cleaner route lines on the map

• Improved transit coverage with new Czech rail timetables and Spanish high-speed trains (Ouigo España, Iryo)
• Ticket machine: accent-insensitive destination search and a quick Buy button on each trip row
• Seekers now see the excluded zone on their minimap
• Seekers can fine tune excluded zone for end game.
• More precise thermometer bisector using great-circle math
• Hider can now answer Unknown for station-view questions during end game
• Express Train curse: you can exit once the train reaches its terminus
• Fixed stations stuck at Null Island and other route-coverage issues

New regions and improved transit data

• Added French city metro and tram coverage (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, and more)
• Replaced synthetic Czech and Ireland rail feeds with real transit data for better accuracy
• Fixed Austrian rail booking with a more complete dataset
• Improved Japan rail station data across all regions
• Fixed missing transit data for certain Spanish routes

Hide and Seek improvements

• Hiding time options updated to 1h, 3h, 5h, 7h
• Fixed matching question exclusion zone for moderate-sized play areas
• Improved radar circle rendering accuracy

Quality of life

• Added clock speed-up hint during walk phases
• Fixed game start time timezone for games at stations in different time zones
• Revamped the What's New page to show individual release notes

• Added Terms of Service agreement to the registration flow
• New Street View coverage layer toggle on the fullscreen map -- see where Street View is available
• New distance ruler tool on the fullscreen map -- measure distances directly on the map
• Cards now display their casting cost, and questions show the card draw cost
• Hide and Seek: hiders are now auto-captured when seekers get close enough, plus a new "The End" button for ending the game
• Fixed thermometer display rendering near map edges
• Fixed route map questions to no longer hint at the hider's location
• Your credit balance is now displayed on the dashboard and the Hide & Seek start page
• Hiders now see an on-screen warning with a countdown timer when they leave the play zone
• Tram and metro routes now have distinct icons on the map
• UK and Ireland ferry routes are now available
• The game menu has been moved into the center clock panel for a cleaner layout
• Dashboard improvements: smarter handling of active games and connection status
• New announcements system for important updates and notices

• Question categories are now color-coded, making it easier to identify question types at a glance
• Expanded transit coverage to Ireland and Northern Ireland
• Improved rail coverage in Wales

Dashboard Revamp

• Refreshed dashboard design with updated layout and background
• Session cards now show solo/multiplayer icons
• Improved active and saved game sections

New Features

• Alpha tester application system -- apply to become a tester from the login page
• Social media links added to the dashboard footer
• Social login now works for existing users when invite codes are required

New Transit Routes

• Northern Europe cross-border ferry connections added

Other Improvements

• Legal information pages added (Privacy Policy, Terms, Cookies, Copyright)
• Unauthenticated waiting room visitors are now redirected to login
• Game creation is now more reliable with an extended timeout
• Improved icon quality across the app

New Features

• New Start game page -- A brand new page for starting Hide and Seek games
• Auto-select train operator -- The ticket machine now automatically selects the correct operator when buying tickets from the departure board
• Station search for testers -- Testers can now search for specific stations when starting a game
• Saved games pagination -- Saved games list now loads faster with server-side pagination

Improvements

• Seeker guidance -- Seekers now see a helpful prompt when they have not asked any questions yet
• Video overlay fixes -- Video and animation overlays now display correctly on top of all game elements
• Waiting room navigation -- The back button in the waiting room now correctly returns to the dashboard

New Features

• Camera: Take photos during walks and store them in your gallery
• Hide and Seek: Hiders can now pick photos from their gallery when answering Street View questions
• New Street View question types: "Tallest building at current location" and "Tallest building at station" questions added

Transit Coverage

• Improved Taiwan high-speed rail speeds and added express routes
• Added Mediterranean cross-border ferry connections
• Expanded southern Japan JR rail coverage
• Updated East and Southeast Europe transit profiles
• Added cross-region through-routes in Japan

Improvements

• Clearer error messages when starting a game
• Stations without exits now display "Transit Only Station" instead of no information

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where taxis could be hailed during the Found phase
• Fixed resting while in a taxi
• Train tickets are now properly forfeited when resting starts during a departure window

• Czech Republic rail network now available with 254 routes and over 1,000 stations
• Improved game start experience: clearer error messages when a player already has an active session
• Smarter starting position placement: the AI Hider algorithm now adapts to regions with smaller transit hubs
• Taiwan transit data refreshed with more accurate train schedules
• Various stability and performance improvements

• New transit regions: Added transit coverage for Spain, Taiwan (THSR, TRA, Metro, LRT), and expanded coverage in Hokkaido and Kyushu, Japan
• Hide and Seek fix: Hiders can no longer hail a taxi during the end-game phase

Taxi Rides

You can now hail a taxi from the walking view and pick a nearby destination to ride to.

Money System

A new money system tracks your balance throughout the game. Train ticket prices are now displayed before purchasing.

Transit Coverage Expanded

• New train routes across southern Italy, Iberia cross-border connections, and the Genova-Ventimiglia line
• Expanded Baltic rail coverage with additional Lithuanian lines
• Hide and Seek with AI in Greek islands becomes possible
• Better ferry stop naming

Quality of Life

• Improved AFK detection based on activity rather than screen visibility
• Better station name handling for multi-route stations
• Performance improvements with gzip compression and video caching

New Features

• Custom start location in multiplayer -- Multiplayer games now support choosing a custom starting location, just like single-player.
• More international train routes -- Added cross-border train connections across East and Southeast Europe for a wider travel network.
• Improved station names -- Stations without names are now automatically resolved, so you will see proper station names instead of machine-generated labels.

Improvements

• Faster and more reliable in-game interactions through server infrastructure upgrades.

New Cards

• Curse of the Freewheeler - a new curse card
• Curse of the Chasm - a new curse card with dice-rolling mechanics
• Curse of the Blind Wanderer - a new curse card
• Five Minute King - a new power card

Gameplay Improvements

• Added the ability to start a game from any station
• Added a tool to show hiding zone in the map
• Added a resting scene for tired players
• Departure warnings now correctly dismiss when buying a new ticket
• Event animations now display for their full intended duration

Dashboard

• Improved dashboard layout with a Go To Tab for active games

• Improved excluded area boundaries for thermometer questions
• Smoother and more accurate route maps
• Fixed an issue where exclusion zones with complex shapes could render incorrectly on the map
• Fixed a bug where certain point-of-interest categories could produce incorrect exclusion zones on the map

New Transit Coverage

• Added rail and tram networks for Hungary (MAV-Start national rail and city trams)
• Added rail networks for Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, and Bulgaria
• Added Greece coverage including trains, metro, trams, and ferry routes
• Added Paris Metro and Ile-de-France Mobilites transit coverage, bringing full metro and regional rail support for the Paris area

Gameplay Improvements

• Curse countdowns now pause during rest periods, so timed curses no longer expire while you rest
• Fixed a bug where matching questions could produce incorrect exclusion maps
• Improved AI hider strategy for the Gamblers Feet card
• Improved data integrity when managing game sessions
• Internal data quality improvements for transit route information

New Features

• More diverse AI hiding spot: With an improved algorithm, AI hiders should find more diverse hiding spot now.
• 50m thermometer tier: Added a new ultra-close 50m distance tier for thermometer questions
• Improved time bonus cards: Time bonus deck now uses a weighted distribution with a new 20-minute denomination for more strategic variety

Improvements

• Cleaner station names: Removed redundant transit suffixes (e.g. "Station", "Gare") from station names for a tidier display
• More Italian train coverage: Added high-speed train connections between Rome, Naples, and Salerno
• Better curse targeting: Drained Brain and Spotty Memory curses now correctly target question categories

Bug Fixes

• Multiplayer disconnect: Leaving a game from the menu now properly disconnects instead of removing the player

New Question Types

• Route Photo: A new question type that shows a photo taken along the walking route between you and the station
• Strava Map: A new question type that displays a route segment on a map, giving clues about the streets nearby.

Gameplay Improvements

• Improved accuracy of transit route polylines displayed on the map
• Fixed thermometer question showing incorrect position during time warp
• Custom radar now supports both kilometers and meters as distance units
• Hiding zone is now restricted to your walking location for fairer gameplay
• Tickets that would arrive too close to the hiding deadline are now blocked to prevent auto-forfeit situations
• Walk speed is now configurable per game preset

Transit Coverage

• Added rail coverage for the Balkans (Slovenia, Bosnia)
• Added metro, tram, and suburban rail for Portugal
• Added transit coverage for Poland, Romania, and the Baltics
• Improved Italian transit data quality

Bug Fixes

• Fixed corrupted transit route displays (zigzag artifacts removed)
• Fixed starting positions to correctly use station entrance points
• Improved server stability during deployments

• Improved station entry point management for a smoother walking experience

New Features

• New Region - Japan -- Try find Ben in the new 5 hour hiding Tokyo game.
• In-game bug reporting -- You can now report bugs directly from the game with a screenshot. Tap the bug icon to submit a report.
• 250m radar distance -- A new closer radar option is now available, giving seekers a more precise detection range.
• Custom radar -- A new custom radar option is now available, giving seekers the ability to ask a radar with an arbitrary radius.
• Auto-blur text in photos -- Text in photo answers is now automatically blurred to prevent giving away location clues
• Keyboard navigation hint -- A helpful overlay now shows WASD/arrow key controls when entering walk mode
• Faster game speed option -- Added a 40x speed option and halved the tick interval for snappier gameplay
• Correct route type labels -- Transit routes now display accurate terminology (e.g. Tram, Subway, Ferry) instead of generic labels
• Report Stuck available to all players -- Any player can now report being stuck at a station, not just testers. This will help them with "go to nearby street"

Improvements

• Departure board fix -- The mini departure board now correctly shows upcoming trains.
• Census question fix -- Census questions now return the correct answer when both counts are zero.
• Impossible answer display -- The impossible answer message is now centered on screen for better visibility.
• Japan transit coverage -- Expanded transit coverage across Japan including Kansai, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Sapporo regions.
• Improved transit hop pathfinding with a minimum 15 km/hr speed filter and automatic retry
• Platform sign and mini departure board repositioned for better visibility
• Ask question panel is now always visible for seekers, even when other panels are open

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Jammed Door curse incorrectly blocking the Go to Platform action
• Fixed movement controls being active during chill cooldown in Street View

Waiting Rooms Improvements

• Public waiting rooms are now front and center -- The dashboard now shows public waiting rooms instead of joinable sessions, making it easier to find and join games.
• Full rooms are hidden -- Waiting rooms that are already full no longer clutter the public rooms list.

UI Polish

• Answer event icon updated -- The question-answered notification now uses a neutral chat bubble icon instead of the old green checkmark, so it no longer looks like you got the answer right -- just that an answer was delivered.
• "Nation" label -- Country match questions now use the label Nation for clarity.

Under the Hood

• Improved transit data coverage for London (TfL) routes.

New Region

• Italy intercity & high-speed rail -- new coverage across Italy

Gameplay Improvements

• Smarter transit planning -- an all-new algorithm picks more interesting and varied routes for your next destination
• "I'm stuck" button -- report when you're stuck at a station and get automatically unstuck
• Dice roll animation -- a fun visual overlay when rolling dice
• Trip extended notification -- you'll now be notified when your trip gets extended
• Jammed doors no longer block exiting -- you can always exit the train, even with a jammed door

UI & Visual Improvements

• Redesigned game clock -- moved to center-top with an integrated menu
• Improved departure board -- mini departure board and platform info relocated below the clock for better visibility
• Location label -- moved to a floating pill in the top-right corner
• Simpler start game page -- cleaner layout with centered buttons and prominent titles
• Generic platform photo -- shown in the transit window when no station photo is available
• Better station markers -- fixed icons that were displaying as text
• Chill message repositioned -- moved to a better spot in street view
• "No trains found" message -- now shown when an operator has no departures

Exploration & Discovery

• POI Explorer auto-search -- automatically re-searches when you pan the map
• Amusement parks -- added to matching game POI categories
• Seeker POI memory -- seekers now remember POI counts from census question answers

Bug Fixes

• Fixed minimap "center to player" button
• Fixed excluded area polygons rendering incorrectly on re-entry
• Fixed map re-zooming every time you enter seeker play view
• Fixed AI hider card discard errors when hand is nearly full
• Improved polyline data validation for smoother route display