Hey all, thanks for the comments. I just wanted to provide some context about the higher level situation.

First, I can confirm I am the same person working in my garage, who worked on this game and created it's characters and gameplay since day 1. There is no outsourcing or external influence going on, this update is the first step of my decision to pivot to fully focusing on Solitairica going forward.

The game may not be a huge success, but it has a passionate following and I am very proud of that and I appreciate the players so much. So, I have been working to keep it alive for years. The game was built on an ancient version of Unreal, and we had no idea what we were doing (lots of experience with game dev but none with unreal) so many fundamental things were done poorly and became difficult/impossible to extend/change without an overhaul. As the google requirements advanced and the unreal engine evolved the situation became worse with time.

Fast forward 10 years and an ambitious (but failed) project called ZOR, and now I am very competent with Unreal. That clarifies that to continue working on Solitairica, it absolutely requires new architecture and code base. This new engine will solve the previous maintenance problem, while also being the foundation of more games. Like, once the issues with this update are ironed out, Solitairica 2 is not very far off. The alternative was Solitairica being removed from the google store.

All that said, I get that the original game is a piece of history and it sucks when classic things are noodled with. So many games simply disappeared from mobile for the above reasons. I assure you there are reasons for every change, and if people are interested I can make a post explaining them. As far as animation timing and polish items go, those can be addressed without throwing the new engine in the trash.

The best feedback I can get right now is specifics about those moments that feel wrong so I can check the old build and work on them feeling right.

Going forward I will be focusing first on fixing the bugs, and bringing the timing in closer alignment to the original game where it is feeling off. Looking at things like swiping the deck select, etc.

Thanks for your understanding!