The daily puzzle now rotates through seven games instead of three, and sharing a solve finally names the right game. Also fixed: the free games were holding the computer on its easiest setting when they should have offered a stronger one.

Finished translating Krampus's in-game dialogue into every supported language, completing all ten seasonal characters in every language the app supports.

Finished translating Flurry's in-game dialogue into every supported language.

Fixed a bug where a nearby or online Snakes and Ladders match didn't record a result or play a sound, and where pass-and-play games were counted as a personal win no matter who actually won.

Finished translating Brindle's in-game dialogue into every supported language. Also fixed a bug where losing a nearby (same-room) match didn't count in your stats.

Finished translating Tinsel's in-game dialogue into every supported language.

Fixed a bug where a nearby (same-room) Senet or Go match could record the wrong result if the connection dropped right at the winning move.

Fixed a bug where a nearby (same-room) Checkers match could record the wrong result if the connection dropped right at the winning move.

Ten more opponents, and they only turn up twice a year. Five arrive for Halloween and five for Christmas. Pemberton is a Victorian ghost who apologizes for winning. Morrow is a jack-o-lantern with no memory, delighted by everything including losing. Tinsel is an elf who has been on her feet since October. Brindle is a reindeer who has never made the team and treats every game as his audition. Each season keeps a fifth character hidden until you beat the fourth. They are not cameos. Between them they carry 4,280 written lines and 1,810 recorded ones: they react at twenty moments, remark on the game in front of them, notice habits in how you play, and end each of the 37 games with a line written for that game. They appear on their own, on the day, with nothing to download. Out of season the cast page shows who is coming back and when. The unlock opens a whole season a week early, keeps it a week longer, and adds a switch to play the seasonal characters any day of the year. The app dresses for the occasion too. Bats in October, snow in December, and neither moves if you have Reduce Motion turned on.

Your opponents finally talk all the way through a game. They used to speak at four moments: hello, who's ahead, you won, you lost. Everything in between was silence. Now they speak at all twenty - taking a piece, losing one, a long think, a lucky roll, a comeback - and each moment is delivered differently. A long think is unhurried. A lucky roll is delighted. Digby still isn't very good at any of this, and still says so. Every game now has one clear set of rules. There used to be two: an Easy Read that left things out, and Full Rules that was a wall. Now there is one, and every game answers the same five questions in the same order - Goal, Setup, Playing, Special rules, Winning - so you learn the shape once and it works everywhere. New artwork on the game cards. Some games were sharing a picture. Checkers, International Draughts, Russian Checkers and Turkish Dama all looked identical, which is a shame when Turkish Dama is played on a plain board with the men in solid ranks. Each one is its own game now. Better on iPad. The main screens were a phone layout stretched across a big screen. Also: the lesson tells you what it covers before you start, the badges page shows what you can reach today instead of a wall of locked ones, and the sounds you hear most stopped repeating one recording.

Online and nearby games are steadier. A position arriving from the other device is now checked before it is loaded, so a damaged one is turned away rather than trusted.

Your opponents come to life. The characters now talk about the game actually in front of them. Not "got one" but "that's four you've had off me now". Not "good move" but "you gave that one the best part of a minute". Every line quotes something that really happened, and they never repeat themselves within a game. They remember how your last game went, not just who won it. Scrape past one and the next game opens with them still sore about it. Hnefatafl, Chinese Checkers and Halma have opponents now too. They were the last three games where you sat down against the computer and found nobody on the other side of the board. Oware, Yut Nori, Snakes and Ladders, Crokinole, Carrom and Mahjong Solitaire no longer throw your game away when the phone rings. They save where you left off and turn up on the Continue card with everything else. Home has a proper shelf now: the boards stand upright and large, and a flick sweeps along them like the old jukebox album view. The computer got honest upgrades across the shelf. Backgammon and Tavla weigh the whole throw rather than one die at a time. Royal Ur searches the stick odds properly. Shut the Box is played perfectly, from a table of every position there is, and Drop Four now plays the solved answer once the board is small enough to prove one. Gomoku finally understands that an open three and a blocked three are different things. Hnefatafl's defenders no longer refuse to win. Hints arrived in Reversi, Checkers, Mahjong and Peg Solitaire. In Peg Solitaire the hint provably never walks you into a position you cannot finish. Halma and Chinese Checkers can now end in a draw when neither side can make progress, instead of running forever. Peg Solitaire's European board is solvable again. The hint used to give up on it after four seconds of searching; it now answers in under a fifth of a second. A design pass over the whole app: one typeface family where there were two, one corner and spacing scale instead of fifteen corner sizes, and a stats tab that is no longer mostly empty before your first game. Sea Battle: a ship could be dragged over the edge of the grid, where the enemy could never hit it and the game could not be lost. Ships stay on the board now.

The computer actually thinks now. Checkers had no search at all. It looked one move ahead and broke ties at random, which is why it was easy to beat. It now searches properly, and the harder settings look several moves ahead. Chess plays from its opening book instead of only naming the opening afterwards, and it remembers positions it has already worked out. It finds the right move in all twenty-four of the app's mate-in-two puzzles. Reversi, Draughts and Xiangqi got the same treatment. Difficulty is now how long the computer gets to think rather than a fixed depth, so it stays sharp on an older phone instead of stuttering. Standard is now free on the free games. It plays a real search with no random slips, so you can find out whether the computer is worth playing before deciding whether to buy anything. Also fixed: - Restarting a game asks first. It used to throw the board away on one tap, from a button sitting right next to Undo. - Chess: you can genuinely play Black. Choosing it used to quietly delete White's opening move. The computer's clock ticks in a timed game too, which it never did. - Ludo, Yut Nori and Shut the Box showed four difficulty settings and never read any of them, so every setting played identically. - Beating someone online is no longer silent, Checkers no longer freezes while the computer thinks, and Reversi shows the legal-move dots in every mode. - Several things the app said about itself were not true, including four screens claiming the characters are off by default when they are on.

The Go board is smaller now and stays fully inside the screen, with the pass button and capture counts always visible below it. No more scrolling to see the whole game. The capture counts also used to say "Black caps" and "White caps" even after you'd recolored your stones from the counter color picker. They now use your name and your opponent's. You can also choose 9x9, 13x13 or 19x19 before the game starts, from the same screen where you pick your opponent, rather than partway through a game.

All 5 opponents have been redrawn. Digby, Bodge, Lord Grimalkin, Master Yuzu and The Great Moltini each have 5 expressions, and this time they were all drawn from the same picture, so a character actually looks like themselves when their face changes mid game. Digby's glasses stay the same shape now. Bodge keeps his tusk when he laughs. The app icon has been tidied up as well. Same chess pieces, cleaner lines. I also went back and translated 77 bits of text that were still showing in English. Mostly the online play messages, the Siri shortcuts and the widgets. Fixed the Go board getting cut off on some phones. It now scrolls if everything doesn't fit the screen. Added a house rule for Hnefatafl: play as the attackers and move first, instead of always defending. Dots and Boxes now has 4x4 and 6x6 boards, on top of 3x3, 5x5 and 7x7. The size is chosen before the game opens now, not after.

Online play now works in 31 games instead of 19. I also went through the rules of all 37 games and checked them against proper sources. I found 28 things wrong. Some of them were bad. Ludo had no blocks. 2 of your pieces on the same square are supposed to stop an opponent getting past, and they didn't. Yut Nori wouldn't let your horses move together. Senet's throwing sticks were backwards. 4 marked faces gave you 5, and none gave you 4. The House of Water was only sending you back 1 square instead of all the way to the House of Rebirth, so the worst square on the board was leaving you better off than before you hit it. In Hnefatafl the attackers could take the king's own guards by trapping them against his throne. Peg solitaire treated 1 peg left as a dead end. That's the win. Chess was writing promotions in a way no other chess app could read. The other games checked out fine. WHAT ELSE IS NEW Online and same room play now covers 31 games. The new ones are International, Russian and Turkish checkers, Xiangqi, Oware, Sea Battle, Yatzy, Shut the Box, Dots and Boxes, Paper Soccer, Carrom and Tavla. You can offer a draw, ask to take a move back, and turn down a challenge. In 15 games the difficulty setting was being ignored, so picking Master Yuzu instead of Digby did nothing at all. Xiangqi, Kalaha and Go are all a lot stronger now. Checkers, checkers, reversi and oware will show you where the game turned. Finished games get saved now, with who you played and the result. The paywall was selling a board theme that's already free, and had a free game sitting in the paid list. Opening a premium game to look at it no longer uses up 1 of your 2 free plays. That only happens once you make a move.

Your opponents finally speak your language. Every line Digby, Bodge, Lord Grimalkin, Master Yuzu and The Great Moltini say is now written in all fourteen languages Boardalo speaks, in character rather than run through a machine. Nine hundred and sixty-three of them. If you play in German, Bodge boasts in German. PIECES YOU CAN ALMOST FEEL A piece now lifts off the board, carries its shadow across, and settles where it lands, instead of sliding flat like a magnet under the table. Fifteen games have it, and it works the same whether the move is yours, the computer's, or one arriving from someone you are playing online. KINDER TO YOUR BATTERY Boardalo was keeping every sound effect loaded from the moment it opened, and quietly animating a background nobody could see behind every board. Both are fixed. It now uses about a fifth of the memory it used to, and the ambient drift stops altogether in Low Power Mode. ALSO - The sounds you hear most often no longer play the same recording every single time. - Pages now run underneath the tab bar instead of stopping in a line above it. - Every achievement has its own badge. Four of them were sharing a placeholder, and two more were the same picture.

Leaderboards and achievements are switched on at last. Boardalo has been keeping your Elo ratings, best scores and fastest solves since the beginning, but almost none of those boards were ever switched on. 43 leaderboards and 26 achievements are now live in Game Center. Tap the controller on Home to see where you stand. THE WEEKLY LADDER HAS A REAL LADDER The solitaire of the week now races on a board that resets every Monday, so the rank on the card is a real placing rather than a blank space. ALSO FIXED - If you had bought the unlock, the category rows in the Library were still only offering the ten free games. All 37 are there now, and the Asymmetric shelf is back. - The characters had one recorded line each for hello, gloating, winning and losing, so they said the same four sentences forever. They have three of each now. - Tapping "not now" on the rating prompt retired it for good, even if you had never seen the App Store sheet. It now waits a few months and asks again.

Every game has a voice now. All thirty-seven games have narrated rules and a coached lesson, including the eleven that were still being read aloud by the robot: Crokinole, Carrom, Xiangqi, Mahjong Solitaire, Tavla, Oware, Yut Nori and the draughts variants. The Great Moltini has finally found his voice too, which he will not thank us for keeping quiet about for so long. ONLINE GAMES DO NOT VANISH WHEN THEY END Finish a match and the board stays exactly where it is. The result appears over the top of it, and playing the same person again is one tap away instead of buried behind a scroll. FAMILY SHARING The unlock now shares across your Family Sharing group, as it always should have. ALSO FIXED - The app could quote the old price on the unlock button before the App Store answered. - Reviews were being asked for in ways that mostly never reached anyone. Fixed, and it will now ask after a lesson or a good run, not only after a win landing on an exact game number. - The help page said nine games were free. It is ten, and Carrom was missing from the list.

Carrom, game thirty-seven. The board you flick rather than move. Carrom arrives with proper physics, a striker that behaves itself, and it is free for everyone. YOUR OPPONENT HAS SOMETHING TO SAY Every game now ends with a word from whoever you played. Digby, Bodge, Lord Grimalkin, Master Yuzu and The Great Moltini each have something to say about that particular game, and about whether you won or lost. Losing used to get you three words. It now gets you a reason to play again. BOARDS THAT SPEAK Every board now describes itself properly to VoiceOver, in all fourteen languages. Reduce Motion is honoured throughout, and text scales further for anyone who needs it larger. TWO NEW WIDGETS Your streak, and how many online games are waiting on you. Both work on the Home Screen and the Lock Screen. PLAY INSIDE A MESSAGE Drop Four and Tic-Tac-Toe can now be played without leaving Messages. ALSO FIXED - Backgammon could close the app in the middle of a game. It no longer does. - Six games showed the wrong result, or no result at all. - Board themes now reach Chess, Kalaha, Oware, Reversi and Backgammon. - Crokinole can be played online, and counters take the colours you choose. - Twenty-one achievements existed in the app but not in Game Center. Now they exist in both.

Crokinole, and counters in your own colours. NEW GAME: Crokinole - the Canadian farmhouse classic. Flick your disc across a round wooden board, knock theirs off, and hunt the twenty in the middle. It has real physics, so a disc that clips a peg goes where the wood sends it. Crokinole plays online too. Because the physics are identical on both devices, you watch your opponent's flick travel and strike rather than the board jumping to a new position. Choose your counter colours - one for you and one for your opponent - before a game starts, in the same sheet where you pick the mode. Your choice is remembered across every game that uses it. Every screen now scrolls up and down only. Some pages could be dragged sideways and felt like they were floating; they no longer can. Yut Nori no longer crashes partway through a game. Crokinole can be played four-handed on one device, with partners sitting opposite, and it has its own interactive lesson like every other game.

Two releases' worth of new things, all in one update. PLAY TOGETHER, IN THE SAME ROOM Nearby play lets two phones or iPads play each other directly, with no internet involved at any point. It used to work for two games. It now works for eighteen, including chess, checkers, backgammon, Go and Ludo. Turn on Wi-Fi, tap Nearby, and play. It works on a plane in aeroplane mode, with no signal at all. THE iPAD IS A PROPER BOARD Sit either side of it and the board fills the table between you, with the far player's name and turn banner turned round to face them. It used to draw the same small board a phone did, marooned in the middle. CLEARER ONLINE MATCHES Whose turn it is is now unmistakable: a plaque and a quiet glow when it is yours, and deliberately nothing when it is theirs. Opponent moves animate the way the computer's do, instead of the board silently jumping to a new position. Invitations and matches waiting on you sit at the top of the home screen with a badge on the app icon, and you can nudge an opponent who has gone quiet, once a day at most. DARK MODE The whole app now follows your phone, with a warm night palette that leaves the boards themselves bright and readable. THE CHARACTERS HAVE LEFT THE CHESS ROOM Digby, Bodge, Grimalkin and Yuzu now react across the collection, including the dice games, where a lucky six or a scratched Yatzy finally gets the comment it deserves. ALSO NEW - A Game of the Day widget for your home screen - Share a result and challenge a friend to beat it - Best of 3 and best of 5 matches for the dice and race games - Tactics puzzles, endgame drills, an opening explorer and a position editor for chess - Take back a move in every game, and optional shape markers for the pieces - A proper iPad layout with a sidebar - More Mahjong layouts, more Peg Solitaire boards, Sudoku hints, and a winnable-deals-only mode for Klondike - A library that shows far more games at a glance - Settings, menus and messages translated into all fourteen languages FIXED Both players in a nearby match used to be told they had won. The screen went to sleep while your opponent was thinking, which quietly ended the match. Everyone in the room was called "iPhone", so you could not tell your friend from a stranger two seats away. Plus a Xiangqi board that could freeze, a Start button you could not reach in some games, and backgammon scoring that paid a gammon as a backgammon. Thanks for playing, and have fun.

A big language update. Boardalo is now fully translated, from the menus right through to every in-game message, across all 14 languages. And the name stays Boardalo wherever you play. I also smoothed out a few small things behind the scenes. Thanks for playing, and have fun.

You asked for it, so here it is: you can now choose who goes first in every game against the computer, you or your opponent. Sea Battle gets a proper setup, too. Drag each ship exactly where you want it instead of leaving it to a shuffle. The dice are clearer as well, with the rolled number shown right on the die so there is never any doubt about what you got. I have also polished the sounds in a few of the games, made the boards feel a little smoother, and fixed a handful of small things. Thanks for playing, and have fun.

Boardalo now speaks your language. This update adds 14 new languages, so you can play and learn in your own words, from the menus through to the lessons. I've also tidied up the writing across the app and fixed a few small things. Thanks for playing, and have fun.