OpenFront v35.7: tutorial and clan map alpha

Direct answer: what changed in OpenFront v35.0 through v35.7?

OpenFront v35.7 adds a guided Tutorial on its own map and the clan territory map in the clan menu’s Map tab (alpha). The official v0.35.7 Release, published on October 29, 2026, says new players on Poki and CrazyGames start in the tutorial. It teaches spawning, expanding, troops and first attacks. Failed lobby or solo-game loading now shows an error message instead of repeatedly returning to the menu. Store cosmetics also show “No AI used” or “AI use unknown”, alongside the existing “Made with AI assistance” wording.

OpenFront v35.6 fixes an early lobby click sometimes skipping the join screen and entering the game directly. The official v0.35.6 Release, published on October 27, 2026, also prepares for Poki integration with a tighter homepage layout on small screens. It describes preparation, not a completed rollout to every Poki player. The Release also reports a clarification in the Terms that unapproved extensions are not allowed.

OpenFront v35.5 adds team spawns, fixes river connections, and improves small-window layouts and the leaderboard. The official v0.35.5 Release, published on October 26, 2026, also hides Account settings on Poki and CrazyGames and lets public map rotation be tuned without a release. Madagascar, Rio de Janeiro, Bab el-Mandeb and New Zealand gain two-team spawns; Branching Paths gains three-team spawns. United States and Rio de Janeiro have fixes for rivers cut off from the ocean. These spawn configurations do not promise that every public lobby uses that team count.

OpenFront v35.4 fixes most public games since v0.35.3 not awarding XP, stats or rewards. The official v0.35.4 Release, published on October 24, 2026, explains that the server stopped trying to save large games too early, which could leave different levels showing on different devices. It does not promise retroactive rewards for affected games. The earlier v35 features remain smarter Nations, faster early trade, ranked FFA and Clan Wars, progression, new controls, and new maps.

Nations now save later, keep building, fortify borders before attacking, defend against landings, and respond more effectively to attacks. Hard and Impossible Nations send 1% beachhead boats followed by land attacks. They route boats around Warships, send squads at blockades, and have boat-route limits of 300 and 500 tiles respectively. In FFA, Nations can pressure a runaway leader. Easy Nations retain their old behaviour. In v0.35.3, Tribes break their alliance with a neighbouring traitor and attack that neighbour; Hard and Impossible Nations stop refusing every renewal in small games. Renewal remains a decision, not a guaranteed acceptance.

The early economy changes in v0.35.0: players with only a few Ports or Factories generate Trade Ships and Trains faster. The boost fades out by six building levels. The Release gives roughly eight seconds instead of twelve for a one-Port player, as an illustration rather than a guaranteed delivery interval. More buildings still mean more trade overall. “Stop Trading with Enemies” keeps trade with allies, and Trains can earn Gold at a station built on their existing track. These changes affect generation and legal settlement; they do not make a blocked route profitable.

Ranked FFA matches four to ten players by ELO, uses a twenty-minute timer, and ends when one human remains. Ranked Clan Wars supports two to five players per side and up to four clans, with rating assigned to the clan. Ranked requires a trusted account. Player levels add XP, a reward track, and Prestige at level 100, progressing through P1 to P10 and then Legend. Level Plutonium remains held until the account is trusted. Subscriber XP boosts differ by subscription; the progression display does not imply an in-match combat bonus.

Controls change together: R opens quick chat, F opens the emoji menu, and select-all-warships moves to X. Nukes can again hand a severed territory piece to a surrounding enemy. Public-lobby size comes from map land instead of a universal 125-player cap. New maps include Madagascar, Horn of Africa, Vancouver Island, Cape of Good Hope, Canary Islands, Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Rio de Janeiro, Pulicat Lake, Benelux, Brain Rot, and Ommatrypta.

Replay seeking is introduced in v0.35.0 but initially disabled by default for gradual rollout. v0.35.3 allows viewing while a game is still being processed; that does not guarantee identical availability on every account. That patch also improves provisional XP, adds Map Layers visibility controls, and repairs mobile attack-slider placement. These are separate changes with different consequences for the next match.

What should you change in the next match?

If you are learning the controls, choose Tutorial to practise spawning, expanding, troops and first attacks on its dedicated map before joining a match. New Poki and CrazyGames players begin there; this does not mean every returning player on every platform must repeat it. Continue with the first-match walkthrough for reserve management and the next decisions.

To inspect clan territory, open the clan menu’s Map tab and keep its alpha status in mind. The announcement does not establish scoring, rewards or refresh intervals. If joining a lobby or starting solo fails to load, read the error message rather than treating the return to the menu as a completed match. The new feedback does not guarantee that every loading cause has been fixed. In the store, “AI use unknown” leaves AI use undetermined; it does not mean “No AI used”.

If you click a lobby immediately after the homepage loads, v35.6 addresses the case where the join screen was skipped. Check the lobby information before committing to a match. On a small screen, expect a more compact homepage; this is separate from the v35.5 change to open Solo pages. The Poki preparation note does not confirm that every portal session already uses the integration.

On the affected team maps, read the actual lobby configuration and inspect your spawn before choosing a route. Recheck river access on United States and Rio de Janeiro instead of relying on an older screenshot. Public rotation can now change between releases, so a map appearing more or less often does not by itself establish a new client patch or a permanent frequency.

In a small or short window, Solo and similar pages now fill the available screen and hide the header and footer while open, including Poki’s non-fullscreen frame. On roughly 1280px screens, the leaderboard hides the clan column by default to avoid running beneath the player card; you can turn that column back on. A missing clan column does not mean your clan membership disappeared. On Poki and CrazyGames, Account settings are hidden; this announcement does not say they were removed from the official website or Steam.

If XP, statistics or rewards were missing after a public game on v0.35.3, distinguish the saving failure addressed in v0.35.4 from an ordinary provisional XP display. A level that differs between devices can be a symptom of that failure. The fix is not an XP multiplier, a new reward rate, or confirmation that past missing rewards will be restored.

Before expanding beside a Nation, inspect both the land contact and the coast. A small boat can establish a beachhead for a later land attack, while a naval blockade can attract a squad response. Keep enough reserve to defend a landing and a border at the same time. Against Hard or Impossible Nations, a route that looked safe under earlier behaviour deserves another look. Use the Nation beachhead guide for that specific decision. A legal transport route answers whether a boat can travel; it does not answer whether the landing survives.

Treat alliance renewal and betrayal as different choices. A Nation may now renew in a small game where it previously always refused, but an offer is not insurance. Keep a fallback border until acceptance is confirmed. Betraying a neighbour can also change the response of allied Tribes in v0.35.3. Check which AI neighbours touch your territory before spending the reserve elsewhere. The AI alliance guide handles that narrower question without promising that every renewal succeeds or every AI responds identically.

Build an economy around completed journeys. The early building boost makes the first working Port or Factory more useful, but a Factory still needs a usable rail network and paying stops. Protect the destination and watch actual income before buying more capacity. For the basic question, read what Factories do. Before using the global trade button, inspect neutral partners as well as enemies: keeping allied trade does not mean every non-hostile partner is spared. The embargo answer distinguishes a targeted restriction from the global action.

Relearn the changed controls before a critical move. Pressing F from old muscle memory opens emoji instead of selecting the fleet; X is the new default fleet key. R opens quick chat for the player under the cursor. Check personal bindings in Settings before relying on those defaults. In v0.35.3, Settings > Graphics > Map Layers hides decoration across maps, and holding Space for the alternate view also hides land map layers. On Brain Rot or Ommatrypta, inspect the revealed terrain before committing to a crossing. A visibility setting changes what you can read, not the terrain itself.

Read the lobby and queue before joining. The Box can fit 210 players, Alps 185, and Middle East 170 under the map-driven system described in the Release; those examples do not promise the same count for every mode or lobby. Ranked FFA has its own smaller population and twenty-minute timer. Clan Wars has clan-sized sides and clan rating. A trusted-account lock and a daily quota are different obstacles, so use the trusted-account answer rather than repeatedly retrying a locked queue.

After a nuclear strike cuts territory, inspect the new ownership before sending follow-up troops. The restored annexation behaviour can change the border and the beneficiary. For the exact capture conditions, use the nuke-cut answer. The practical checklist is to confirm the border, reserve, route, current control binding, and queue rules before spending. These checks turn the v35 changes into choices you can actually make.

Source status, patch boundaries, and next reading

The latest formal boundary is the v0.35.7 Release, published on October 29, 2026. Its four new items cover the clan Map tab in alpha, guided Tutorial and portal onboarding, loading-failure feedback, and cosmetic AI labels. They do not announce combat or economy balance changes. The alpha map announcement does not define territory rules, and a cosmetic label is not a promise of an independent audit.

The v0.35.6 Release, published on October 27, 2026, covers Poki preparation, the small-screen homepage, the join-screen fix and the Terms clarification about unapproved extensions. That patch did not announce a completed Poki rollout. The v35.7 tutorial entry for new Poki and CrazyGames players is a later, specific change; it does not establish every other portal feature’s availability. Earlier patch sections retain their own version boundaries.

The v0.35.5 Release, published on October 26, 2026, announces team spawns, river connections, window layout, leaderboard defaults and portal settings, plus server security improvements and a privacy-policy disclosure of the hashed network identifiers used. The note does not specify retention periods or establish anonymity. It also says public lobby map rotation can be tuned without a release; a version tag alone therefore cannot establish current live rotation weights.

The v0.35.4 Release, published on October 24, 2026, fixes public-game saving that failed too early for large games, leaving most public games since v0.35.3 without XP, stats or rewards. The note explains cross-device level differences but does not announce historical backfill or a change to XP rates.

The feature baseline is the official v0.35.0 Release, published on October 16, 2026. Its overview groups Nations, progression, ranked queues, replay seeking, controls, economic generation, map-driven lobbies, and new maps. The later Release pages repeat that baseline underneath their own patch headings. Read the heading above an item before assigning its introduction date. A feature repeated in the v0.35.3 body did not necessarily first ship with v0.35.3. Earlier v34 history belongs in the v34 notes.

The v0.35.1 Release, published on October 17 UTC, changes profile cards to use the clan tag from the latest game, adds Antarctic Tribe themes on Antarctica and Deglaciated Antarctica, and hides store, Steam promotions, and profile-share links on game portals. These are presentation and platform boundaries. They do not replace the v35 Nation strategy, ranked format, or economic generation rules. A player on a portal may therefore see a different store or sharing surface without playing a different combat system.

The v0.35.2 Release, also published on October 17 UTC, restores a build preview that follows the cursor. The tile-snapping behaviour becomes the optional Snap Build Preview setting in Gameplay, off by default. It also fixes kicks failing to remove players who rejoined from another tab or device. If a placement preview looks different from an early v35 recording, inspect that setting before assuming the building rule changed. The Release body labels the patch October 16; the publication dates here use the API’s UTC timestamps.

The v0.35.3 Release, published on October 23, precedes the saving fix. Besides the alliance and map-visibility changes, it fixes an advertisement covering in-game controls, allows Steam purchase approval in a browser when the desktop overlay cannot appear, and adds ten quick-chat phrases. Survivors see provisional XP immediately when the game ends. Replays can be watched while processing continues. Profile cards show unverified names with their numeric suffix. A mobile attack-ratio slider placement issue and the server-side twenty-character username limit are also addressed.

The same patch repairs a water-nuke crash when a Port or Warship has no adjacent water and fixes a troop-duplication exploit. For ordinary play, the useful consequence is improved reliability; no reproduction steps are needed. Brain Rot receives more crossings and a lower central peak, impassable regions become clearer, Ommatrypta’s water improves, and both Halloween maps prefer higher team counts. Read the actual map and lobby configuration rather than carrying an old screenshot’s route into a new match.

Replay and XP have distinct completion states. A provisional XP figure can appear before final reconciliation, and an introduced replay feature can still be subject to rollout. Use the replay review guide when the viewer is available. Follow the focused answers linked above for detailed calculations and conditions, and return to this stable version page when a later formal patch changes the decisions.