The Mountain and the Count

Improved

• The opening is now a climb of about 30 seconds up the mountain, over rolling hills for each region of the Long Tally, each with its own trees, rocks, wildlife and music, past rivals doing something in character, to Skip and Skat on the summit, where the main menu's medallion rises out of them. Any press skips it, and with Reduce motion on it does not play. If you skipped the old opening, the new one plays on your next start, and Replay intro under Settings, About plays it any time.
• The show is counted the way you count it at the table, fifteen two, fifteen four, and a pair is six. Each scored item gets its own beat and its own sound, its cards lift while the rest dim, and the total climbs as you go. Your peg and the score wait for the count to land, except on a muggins hand, where they move once you make your call.
• In the ledger a crib turns over one card at a time, and the rival's crib turns over on the table too. Three or four of a rank read as one Pair Royal or Double Pair Royal row, a powerup's points fly into the total, the card usually turns its page between shows instead of sliding away and back, and a 28 or 29 gets its name stamped across the cards.
• After a muggins call, the right count is ringed and a wrong pick is struck through, then the hand is counted out.
• Each pegging play lands in order. The card lands, the count lands with the call, the points fly to your peg, the peg seats, and then the score ticks up. Sounds, powerup pulses and the rival's reactions no longer go off while the card is still in the air.
• The played row answers the call. Runs lift their cards note by note, pairs knock the row, a 31 presses it, and a pegging play of yours worth 12 or more gives the table a small shake unless Screen shake is off.
• When a round ends, the played cards turn face down and slide away instead of vanishing. A go now closes the round in half the Round-close hold, and with Auto-advance on, a card you picked ahead of your turn plays 1 second after your turn opens instead of 2. The rival's popups are smaller and darker than yours, popups no longer print over each other, and your turn shows as a still bar above the count instead of a pulsing glow.
• Winning lands bigger the more it means. On the board a match win hits harder than a leg win, and your winning peg hangs at the top of its hop. At the end of a campaign or vs. AI match, a win, a skunk and a double skunk each stamp harder than the last, and the stamp sounds as it strikes. The summary names a skunk, WON BY A SKUNK or WON BY A DOUBLE SKUNK.
• When you lose a leg, a small ring marks the hole where it was decided. A duplicate match ends with FINAL and the margin over the board, and a vs. AI rematch now drops the summary away and brings the new board in before you pick.
• Cards in your hand ease up when you hover or pick them, with a soft tick on hover and a sound when you set one back down, and a controller's cursor lifts the card it points at. The deal throws each card off the deck and turns yours face up in flight, pegging plays arc onto the table, and sorting your hand slides the cards into place.
• Between hands the crib and the cut gather back onto the deck instead of vanishing, and the next dealer's crib pocket gives a small pulse. When you play Card Swap or Extra Draw, the card you give up flies back to the deck and the new one is dealt in, and a Mulligan sends your six back to the deck before it redeals.
• Buttons answer a press the same way across the game. One sinks as you press, stays down while you hold it and springs back when you let go, and Enter or a controller's A button shows the same press as a click.
• With Reduce motion on, all of these moments keep their order and leave out most of the movement.
• In a campaign match or a weekly challenge, the first deal now plays out on the open table after the fight card instead of under it. In the campaign that means you make your opening powerup and consumable picks before you see your hand. Against the AI and online, the real board is already set under the peg draft and your picks, and against the AI the rival slides into its seat.
• The fight card moves on 2 seconds after a spoken greeting ends instead of 5, and the VS strikes as it lands. Against the AI, the peg draft shows the rival weighing its pick. A powerup or consumable you pick closes into the slot it fills.
• When one of your powerups scores, its card pulses with a light rim, and during pegging its points rise off it.
• Landing on a powerup or level up tile, or a marking tile against the AI or online, slows your peg in as the tile rises to meet it. In the campaign and against the AI, a powerup you win flies into a waiting slot in your row when you have room. Powerups the rival wins fly into its row, its powerup buys and level ups play out together just before the next deal, and a heat boil-over in the Beyond sends an ember to the rival's peg before it moves.
• Gold throws more coins the bigger the amount, and your purse climbs as each one lands. Rerolling the shop flips the offers over, and leveling a powerup in the shop pops its new pip. In the campaign and against the AI, crossing hole 31 or 91 tells you the Pedlar comes after this hand. A Rare or better pack offer turns over last with a shine, and the rarest prizes and shop buys show it in how they move.
• The show and pegging cards answer a big hand. A solid one thumps the card, a big one lights up its border, a huge one also lifts the card and adds sparks or a flick of the cards, and a hand of 24 or more runs the light round twice, throws sparks from every corner and keeps the border lit while you read. The rival's big hands get a quieter version.
• Every row on the show and pegging cards lines up on one grid, and a gold row names its card with the gold in the points column. Once a show has a modifier, board motion or muggins row, both cards keep that wider shape for the rest of the match. The countdown ring is easier to read and shows a word only when it means something, PAUSED, MORE or MANUAL.
• Small accent text, red unless you pick another accent, is brighter, so it stands apart from the tan captions by light and dark and not only by color, and loud tags like THIS WEEK are light text on a filled tag. Red card ink is darker on the decks where it read faint.
• Your pegs wear a light ring and the rival's a dark one, and the YOU and RIVAL lane labels read on every board, so the seats tell apart without color. On THE CLIMB your markers are filled and the rival's are hollow, and text over the table art, like the key legend and the sort buttons, sits on a dark plate.
• The keyboard and a controller now reach detail only the mouse could show. Powerup pack offers, show rows, locked pegs, Browse rule chips, hands on THE CLIMB and each card in a summary's builds take focus and show their detail, and campaign summaries print each card's name in THE BUILDS when there is room.
• In the pack and mark pickers a picked card shows a check badge, and there and on the swap and level up pickers a focused card wears a light ring, so the two never look alike. Dropdowns outline the row you are on, empty level pips are brighter rings beside a level caption, and text fields have a visible edge, with a pencil on one line fields.
• The card you open before a weekly challenge prints each powerup and peg rule in full in larger text, and a consumable shows its rule when you point at it or move to it. Your own standings row is marked with a bar, notices on the online hub, Challenges and Browse pages sit just above the footer instead of over the top of the page, and a notice stays up while your pointer rests on it.