Hardwood Games Update — What's New Since Build 630

Posted by the Silver Creek Entertainment Team

Hey Hardwood players! It's been a few builds since our last update, so here's a roundup of everything we've improved and added for you. There's a lot to cover!

New Features

New Spades Rule: Whiz

We've added the Whiz bidding rule to Spades! In Whiz, you must either bid the number of spades in your hand (similar to Mirror bidding) or go Nil. It's a popular house rule that adds a fun extra layer of strategy to the bidding phase, and it's now available in both multiplayer and single player.

Bug Fixes

Multi-Foom Binds Working Again

If you set up a command bind that chains multiple fooms together (like /bind c=/foom west && /foom east), only the first foom was actually firing. The rest of the chain was being silently ignored. All fooms in a bind now fire correctly.

Android: Purchased Foom Extensions Reappearing After Cache Clear

Players with purchased foom extensions were sometimes finding them missing after their device's cache was cleared — either manually or automatically by Android. Your downloaded extensions will no longer disappear when that happens.

Avatar Looking Different in Different Parts of the Game

Some players noticed their avatar looked different in the plaza compared to their profile page. This was a sync issue between the avatar saved on your device and the one on our servers. Your avatar should now appear consistently everywhere.

Spades/Trick Games: Suit-Following Enforcement Fixed

We fixed a bug where the server was sometimes allowing a card to be played off-suit when the player actually had a matching suit in hand. Suit-following rules are now correctly enforced.

Android: Fixed a Crash When Changing System Colors

On Android, changing your device's dynamic color theme in system settings while Hardwood was open would crash the game. That crash is fixed.

Backgammon: Dice Showing Wrong Numbers After Rejoining

If you left a Backgammon game and rejoined mid-turn, the dice sometimes would display 5s on screen regardless of what was actually rolled. Rejoining now correctly shows the real dice values.

Backgammon: "Your Turn" Indicator Missing After Rejoining

When rejoining a game mid-turn, your name plaque wasn't lighting up to show it was your turn , making the game look completely frozen. The turn indicator now works correctly after a rejoin.

Backgammon: Bot Stopping Mid-Turn

In certain situations involving a player leaving and a bot stepping in, the bot would stop taking its turn entirely, leaving the game stuck with no way forward. This has been fixed.

Backgammon: Games Freezing on the Doubling Cube

A number of players reported games completely locking up after interacting with the doubling cube. The next player's dice roll would never trigger, leaving everyone stuck. This is resolved.

Several Causes of Stuck Games Fixed

We tracked down and fixed multiple issues that could cause games to get into stuck states — particularly in multiplayer lobby games. If you've been experiencing games that seem locked up for no clear reason, these fixes should help significantly.

Backgammon: Dice Not Appearing on Some Android Devices

On lower-end Android devices with limited available memory, the dice could fail to load entirely, leaving you staring at the board with no way to roll. The game now handles low-memory situations more gracefully so this doesn't leave you stuck.