Puzzle Together News

This month's update adds one often-requested setting, makes tweaks to improve a few features, and fixes some bugs.

- Under Settings, you can now choose from four different table surfaces: the normal light wood, dark wood, and black and white surfaces. You can choose a table color that contrasts with the puzzle pieces or just makes your eyes more comfortable.

- Pieces can now be dragged while you're in selection mode. You no longer need to switch in and out of selection mode to move several groups of pieces around.

- Fixed a bug that would cause the sorting arrow to pop up sometimes when not wanted, while moving pieces.

- Fixes issues to prevent pieces from occasionally disappearing or becoming stuck and unmovable.

- A few other small usability fixes.

This month's update refines the selection system and adds a new sort feature. The two changes work together to make it a lot easier to group together the pieces you're looking for.

First, when you enter select mode (by pressing the button with a arrow drawing a box) you can now press on individual pieces to select or deselect them. This is in addition to being able to draw a box around a group of pieces to select them all. Being able to select individual pieces makes it easy to, for example, select all the pieces that appear to be part of a particular object.

Next, a new sorting option has been added, called Spread. This takes all of the pieces (or if you've selected pieces, then it just takes those) and arranges them neatly in a circle. One use for this is to layout all of the pieces at the start of a puzzle, so that none are overlapping.

These two new features can be used together to make it easy to sort together the pieces you want to work with. Enter selection mode and click on all the pieces you want, for example each piece that is part of a certain object. Then use the Spread option to arrange all of those selected pieces together in a neat group, at the place on the table where you'd like to work with them.

Finally, another recent change requires that a player in an open puzzle connect several pieces together before they will be allowed to place pieces in their final position on the mat. This is to prevent 'trolls' from going into an open puzzle, taking large groups of connected pieces that players are working on, and placing them permanently in position on the mat -- which makes it much harder for the players to continue working on those sections. Now players who are new to an open puzzle will need to put some work in before they can place pieces in their final position, work that trolls usually don't have the patience for.

Fun facts: over 900,000 puzzles have been completed in Puzzle Together, and over 347,000,000 pieces have been connected... so far!

With this week's update, over 500 new puzzles are added to Puzzle Together -- great paintings found in museums around the world! These include works by Da Vinci, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Munch, Klimt, and many, many more. Some of these paintings are well known, and all of them were chosen for the potential to make interesting and challenging puzzles.

To play one of these new puzzles, select Start a Puzzle from the menu. Then from the "Show" dropdown, choose one of the six new "Museum" categories: Architecture, Landscapes, Nature, Portraits, Scenes, and Still Lifes.

Another Steam integration was also added this week: you can now invite Steam friends directly to your puzzle from within Puzzle Together. When playing a puzzle that you host (that is, a puzzle that you started) or an open puzzle, hit the Invite Friends button (or press f) to open the Puzzle with Friends page. There you will find a list of your Steam friends -- just press the 'invite' button beside a friend's name to invite that friend directly to your puzzle. This will prove to be a time saver for groups of friends who like to go from puzzle to puzzle together -- there's no more need to send out codes.

Finally, the ability has been added to report and block players who are being bothersome in an open puzzle. Simply press on their name at the top of the screen and select "Report & Block". Once enough reports have been received about a particular player, they will be blocked automatically. And, when you mute or ignore another player, those preferences are now stored between sessions, so you won't have to do it again the next time you encounter that player.

Special thanks to the following museums for making parts of their collections available for us to puzzle with:

The Art Institute of Chicago
The Belvedere
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The Getty
Harvard Art Museums
The Louvre
The Mauritshuis
The Met Museum
The Munch Museum
Nationalmuseum Stockholm
The National Gallery of Art
The Pinakotheken
The SMK

Today's update adds 34 achievements to Puzzle Together. All achievements that can be earned are listed on the Guide page, and the achievements you've gained are listed under Stats (as well as in Steam).

Several of the achievements are fairly easy to earn, while others are fiendishly tricky or require epic amounts of puzzling! Long time players needn't worry, you will be credited for achievements already earned before this update, once you complete your next puzzle.

Of the 34 achievements, 19 of the more difficult ones come with one or more free puzzle credits when earned, that you can use to unlock any puzzles of your choosing.

This update includes a bunch of features that players have been asking for, as well as a few general improvements and bug fixes.

Here are some highlights:

If the "show box" option is turned off for a puzzle, then its image appears blurred (and with a '?' over it) in all lists of puzzles. This allows a puzzle's host to make the subject of the puzzle a surprise that will only be revealed when the puzzle is completed!

The puzzle mat can now show a faded version of the puzzle image to help with piece placement. To turn this on, hold down the Alt key (Option key on Mac), or double click on the mat. This option isn't available if "show box" is turned off for the puzzle.

Each entry in a puzzle list now includes icons that show whether the puzzle is open to all, and whether the "show box" and "rotate pieces" options are turned on. This will make it easier to choose open puzzles and invitations that you prefer.

Plus, a few more new features:

- Anyone can now invite friends to join an open puzzle, not just the puzzle's host.
- Custom puzzles are now stored at a higher resolution for sharper details.
- The buttons at the top of the puzzle screen (select, mute, etc.) now have tooltips and hotkeys.
- The game now tries to detect when a troll disrupts an open puzzle, and causes other players to ignore their moves.
- Black mat color option added.
- Chat button color flash when chat is received made more obvious.

...and a handful of fixes:

- Fixed a bug that could causes pieces to become unmovable.
- Fixed a bug that could cause chat panel to be stuck open.
- Fixed German translation issue on puzzle stats page.
- Fixed layout bugs on the Start Puzzle page.
- Prompts for feedback less frequently.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!