Make waiting room work in the background

[Simon Steel]

Recommendation from someone who just discovered this game a few weeks ago...

What I'm finding in multiplayer mode is that there's only a few games going at any given time -- so between 4 and 20 players, and usually no open games waiting for someone to join.

So I'll set up a new game, but then I'm sitting and waiting -- and I can't use my phone while I wait. I give it a few minutes, and then I give up.

So, my suggestion would be to allow the waiting room to run in the background and notify the user when someone has arrived. Simple way could be a dialog notification. Another way could be red color bar across the top that switches green when someone has joined your room. You'd have to account for various use cases like what happens if someone joins, but then the started doesn't want to play and never switches back and things like that, but nothing major.

That said, from I can gather, this game hasn't been in active dev for years (beyond ensuring compatibility with new iOS/Android versions). I'm assuming this would probably be a decent number of hours for people that have likely moved on in their lives.

[LawrenceA]

I like this idea and think that it would have a great impact on the active playerbase.

Not that I use iOS any more, but back in the day there was something in Cydia called backgrounder which would do something similar to what you've described: keeping an application running while still being able to use another.