The game now has an online multiplayer mode! You can invite anyone from your friends list to join your game. Just click the bird and select a friend from the invite dialog. Your friend can then accept the invite from the chat window. That's it - then you should be playing together on the same board.
Previously there was only Steam's Remote Play Together, which can be a bad experience if the internet connection isn't good enough. The new true online multiplayer mode is much simpler to use and independent of the quality of connection.
There is also a new achievement that is earned by inviting someone to your game.

Although the rules of the game are quite simple, it may be hard for beginners to understand certain core tactics. Which is why now, while your mouse hovers over a point of the board, the game will display comments such as "Risky", "Suboptimal" or "Invalid". This should help with learning to play the game. Comments are only displayed in the lowest difficulty mode (the Fly), but not in higher levels and also not in multiplayer.

• "Risky" means that the stone you are about to place is easily and quickly captured by the opponent. Not only the most obvious cases are detected, but rather tricky ones too.
  
• "Suboptimal" means that there are better options nearby to place your stone.
  
• "Invalid" just means that the move is against the rules. The game won't let you make that move.

Please note that there is no absolute guarantee that the program classifies all situations correctly. There could always be special cases that I didn't think of. I'd be glad if you share screenshots of incorrectly classified situations with me, so I can fix them.

• It is no longer necessary to manually start the computer player after each move when the game is in tree stump mode. Instead you only need to start it once and the game will remember to automatically start the same computer player after you make a move. You can still interrupt it by clicking on the cross and then select another difficulty level at any time.
  
• Fixed a visual glitch where button animations didn't play correctly in classic mode.
  
• Fixed problems with touch input in classic mode.
  
• AI improved a little.
  
• Lots of other tiny tweaks and improvements.

Fixed an AI bug that could sometimes produce suboptimal moves in the rather late phase of the game. When it occurred, the end result would differ by +1 or -1, respectively.

Please note that while the choice of colors in the cover image is of course intentional, it is absolutely not an attempt to capitalize on current events. Stop war!

• For now only English, French and German. Maybe more will come.
  
• The game will use the same language as your Steam client by default, but it can be changed from the properties dialog that is accessible from your Steam library.
  
• Everyone is welcome to point out bad translations and to post corrections on the forum! You are also even more welcome to contribute translations to other languages. It's about 250 words.

• The Snail/Master CPU player was completely re-invented. Quality improved and nodes per second more than doubled. Its play style feels somewhat different and less predictable.
  
• Graphics processor usage reduced to absolute Zero when the image is still. For laptop and tablet users this means that the battery lasts longer, the device runs cooler and the fans are quieter.
  
• The auto-finish function is now better at detecting when both players have run out of meaningful options. There is still room for improvement.

• Fixed AI getting interrupted when switching between nature and classic modes.
  
• Fixed accidental double clicks with touch input by ignoring touch input for a short duration after first click.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the auto-finish button to remain hidden when it shouldn't.
  
• Fixed a bug where an achievement would not unlock when in classic mode.
  
• Fixed black/white flower not updating when background is updated.

The previous AI was built by labor-intensive cycles of making fine adjustments to its code, benchmarking them and then deciding whether to keep or discard the changes. Over and over again, for weeks. Naturally this approach had its (human) limitations, so a completely different one was tried: Let the computer learn the game completely on its own by playing against itself, without any prior knowledge except the rules of the game and without any human interference at all. Surprisingly, after only a few hours (!) of learning, the new AI surpassed the previous hand-crafted one.

• The same board game but with a clean interface.
  
• It is fully integrated into the already existing application. Simply press a button to instantly switch between the classic and artful style.
  
• A fixed CPU opponent is chosen from the start or disabled entirely for multiplayer games.
  
• Saves remain fully compatible between both versions.
  
• Comes with many predefined color themes to chose from. They can be modified or added in the colors.txt file in the game's resource folder.
  
• Fun fact FYI: Elm looked like this before it got completely overhauled to the artful version which was first released on Steam. So this new content is actually not really new, but more like a refurbished backup from a long time ago. This version is offered completely free to play. More info below.

Classic Elm is free to play as a demo. The artful version is not included. For now, all things related to Steam such as cloud sync and achievements are also not available in the demo. Other than that it is fully playable and has no further drawbacks compared to the full version.

• Drastically lowered easy and medium difficulty levels by halving their search depths. Apparently the AI was not appropriate for beginners before; hopefully it is now.
  
• The app will automatically go fullscreen when launched from Steam's Big Picture mode.
  
• Clicking the mushroom (fly agaric) now opens the menu and rules instead of closing the game. From there the game can be closed by clicking the cross in the top right corner.
  
• The frog will now remember whether music is muted or not.
  
• Magnification mode removed. It was too easy to toggle accidentally and it doesn't really have a purpose anymore since there is now the classic version with a larger board.
  
• Improved controller/joystick support: Cursor should move more smoothly.

The store page was updated with new a new trailer, screenshots and description.

There are now six trophies for you to achieve! They range from easy to hard to win. They are purely optional of course, the game itself did not change in any way. Trophies can only be won for games started after this update. The reason is described below. Sorry if that bothers you, but there is no other way.

To prevent false claims to those trophies, a mechanism to prohibit cheating had to be implemented. The mechanism is based on a simple trick: When a game is saved, a code is generated based on the state of the game. When the file is loaded and the code is wrong, then the file must have been tampered with. There is no third-party anti-cheat system involved.
Saved games that were started before this update do not have such a code, thus are not protected against manipulation. For this reason achievements will not unlock until you start a new game.

• Saved games now remember which computer player was last selected and the mouse is automatically placed above it.
  
• Linux versions now include the OpenAL library. It was noticed that of all Linux versions tested, only Ubuntu did not seem to have it by default, so 'ldd' reported it missing. For some strange reason the game loaded up anyway, but only when launched through Steam. Must have been Valve magic...

• fixed stone positions not updating when background changes
  
• fixed mushrooms growing on top of the frog/toad
  
• The snail got better at playing the game. New vs. Old: 84:36 in a 171 game match (51 draws). See details below.
  
• slightly changed frog/toad eyes
  
• leaves look a little bit more natural now
  
• more variety in frog/toad, mushroom and flower sizes
  
• the area in which the mouse is regarded as hovering over the stump got larger
  
• some texts have changed
  
• The Steam Cloud now also syncs the file "computerlog.csv" from the program folder (.../steamapps/common/The Elm Game/saves/computerlog.csv). It contains performance measurements such as search depth, nodes per second etc. Could be used to benchmark the computer.

This update accelerates the "think speed" of the computer player a little bit. The time constraints remain unchanged. Compared to before it is now able to plan a little further ahead into the future, resulting in better strategies. The beetle and fly are not affected since they have fixed search depths anyway (6 and 2). Only the snail with unlimited search depth benefits from it. However, all three may in some situations behave somewhat differently then before.