Happy New Year 2026!
It's great to catch up with you all for this new year! Fortune Avenue has already come a long way since its launch in April 2025, with networking improvements, DirectX 12 rendering support, new language options, new wonders, cards, and rules, safe to say everything's heading in the right direction.
And v0.48.0 is arriving almost 2 months ahead of schedule. Originally slated for March 2026, I had to make a few trade-offs to get everything in without introducing bugs. Not to mention this update lays the groundwork for Steam Workshop integration.
New Game Board
A brand-new game board makes its debut. It's larger and adds several cities, here's the full list:
- Abidjan
- Lagos
- Karachi
- Istanbul
- Lima
- Chicago
- Vienna
- Warsaw
This means that now when you create a new game, you can choose your board size. Obviously, a bigger board means longer games. So quick matches will be played on a small board, while longer sessions, typically lasting 45 minutes to an hour, will be played on the large board.
New Themes
Along with this new board, I've also added two new themes. The first one is autumn, I know it's not the season, but having little mushrooms, pumpkins, and scarecrows instantly gives the game a cozier vibe.
The second theme is more timely since it's dedicated to lovebirds, or rather Valentine's Day. Hearts, balloons, benches, I didn't get too creative, but it turned out pretty nice.
Optimization
I got feedback about loading issues. Turns out the initial loading of Fortune Avenue was taking forever. Several minutes during which the game simply wasn't responding.
I'm really sorry about these issues, so I dove under the hood and found I could defer and precompile certain game elements. Loading time has been cut by over 60% for faster computers, and it's even more significant for slower ones, with loading now dropping below the 10-second mark.
Just to clarify, I'm talking about the loading time between when the screen goes black and when it shows the game scene. Steam authentication ticket creation is still just as slow, but it doesn't consume resources. Those are unavoidable delays due to Steam's servers.
So there you have it, I think it's a solid update that adds a ton of content and sets the stage for what's next. Now that the game board can change, I've laid the foundation for mods to completely transform the board's look and feel. But that's for a future update, not quite yet.
In the meantime, happy gaming,
See you soon, take care
Xavier aka Binogure