Future
Corporations

Not a big update, but nevertheless. Not surprisingly, I’m not a native English speaker. So, there were quite a lot of grammar issues in the onboarding tour. Now they are fixed. And just to complete the picture with texts, the game is now also available in Russian. More languages to come.

Some events now show cool animation instead of boring static text. This makes the game more fun to play 🥳 Keep on tunes: more animations to come in the Future.

The game board just got more contrast and vividness. The hover cars now have flame trails (that’s how they move, after all). Also, they cast nice shadows on the carton, so they became slightly more visible.

🎶🎺🎷🎶 Future corporations are featuring some cheerful background soundtracks for the right atmosphere. On Android, the music plays straight away, and in the web version, it is muted by default. In any case, you can adjust the setting at any moment by clicking the gears button.

Good news for all who are still using a dial-up modem to go online. Previously, if your link goes down for some time, the game could enter an awkward state when it thinks it’s online, whereas it is actually not. It hurt the game experience a lot. Now, the network communication layer is reworked and hopefully become much-much more robust, like the Future is now.

Nothing much special today, but nevertheless. The starting image colors and characters are adjusted to better match the game colors and icon. Also, a few UI flaws are fixed, like screen jumping when editing your character name or entering a room address to join.

Long-awaited update. Not a surprise; it’s hard to find a matching opponent for a global game because Future Corporations have a minimal fan base yet. 140 active players mean ~10 min of waiting on the dull “Waiting for others” screen. Growing the user base is a chicken-and-egg problem that is hard for indie-developers like us. To make the experience more pleasant right now, we introduce Android push-notifications on game start. From now on, you can buy in a global room, turn on the notification, then switch to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, or whatever and wait there. We’ll send you a push once the matching player is found.

The game got a brand-new icon on Android. Thanks to our artist Alex, I think it’s perfect! You might also note favicons update for the web-version of the game and for the site.

You might have noticed an avatar car always has two colors on its body parts. Alas, only one was customizable in the garage. This is no longer true. From now on, you can genuinely change both colors to make your token outstanding.

Our artist Alex has reworked a dozen of illustrations to make them even cuter and retrofuturistic. Finally, all cells share the same stylistic and look nice. I’m sure you’d like it, just start a new game and see these beauties!

The first update of 2021, huh! It’s all about polishing. Seems like the root cause of periodic crashes on Android is found and fixed now. Moreover, the bug causing elements to be improperly scaled on the newest WQHD-display devices with Android 11 (like Samsung Galaxy) is defeated. In contrast, non-wide displays (like tablets) now correctly fit the game screen. Happy new year!

Yet another batch of small improvements. When editing your profile, it’s now clear how the ownership token will look like. Then, when the game starts, the car tokens are nicely appearing out of the opening gate. And the last thing which makes the game process a little more intuitive: if you’re sent back to the start or jail without the salary payout, the tokens indeed fly back over the map. Hope you’d like it!

We are making small steps toward improving the game experience, and here’s a new release focused on animation polishing. The car tokens now fly smoother. Also, hopefully, the rare yet very frustrating bug when the game tokens ignore the turn move is fixed.

Don’t you think the game log at the center of the board is too noisy and, at times, hard to follow? No more. From now on, the comprehensive logbook is removed from the game board, although it is still available if you press the new “LOG” button. Only the headline telling what happens right now is shown by default to make it easier to focus on the game. The styles and wording are improved; delays between actions made a little longer. I hope the update made the Future yet cozier.

Big update. All global games are ranked now. Buy into the game with some amount of capital, win, get the bank. All new players are deposited with 10000 of start capital. What else... daily subsidies of 1500 available, and even if you are going bankrupt, no problem: the government guarantees 1000 of capital for everyone as the poverty level. Let’s roll!

Finally, you can play Future Corporations on Android natively! Oh, that was surprisingly difficult: tonnes of little nuances that you’d expect to just work gone wrong on mobile. But, huh, hopefully, they are all addressed. So, welcome to the open testing! The game is only available with a direct link to Google Play for now. Feedback is much appreciated.

Meet the first regular update. The timings were adjusted, and now a restless player can’t mess up relaxed game flow: little pauses between actions are enforced to comfortably follow all that happens. At the same time, the game app itself made much more responsive and performant for an even better experience.

You might be annoyed by the central log pane, which refuses to scroll properly as new game records appear. Now it seems to be fixed. A dedicated button to stick scrolling to the bottom was also added.

Whew! About 250 players tried the game on the first day. Thanks all! Some flaws became immediately apparent. And here’s the first game update: if two players paired have the same look, the colors of one are changed for this particular game to make the tokens and avatars distinguishable.

The game is finally open for anyone to try. Still, many things are yet to be done. Nevertheless, the core is ready and arguably playable. Your feedback and sharing with friends are much appreciated.

The expectations were too optimistic. The game is not going to be released in July, it will not be released in August. Although the new technologies gave a significant boost at the start, they act as a brake at the later stages: too much unstable/not-yet-implemented stuff, especially when using the web-stack to develop a game. I'm tired, and the pre-pandemic duties return, meaning I have less time for the development. But the game is going to be complete in any case!

The isolation due to Covid-19 is somewhat boring. At the same time, it opens new possibilities. What can I do? Let me try some new web-programming technologies in practice to create a game. The plan is to make the first public release until 1st July. Challenge accepted.