board doesn't rotate

[nisfornormal]

in every other game I've played, the game board is rotated so that you are at the bottom. Why isn't this game like that?

[paramesis]

Hi,

This came up during alpha testing and there is a suggestion report here, in which I give my reasons for why it is implemented the way it is now, which I expand upon here.

1. it would require major redesign of board position and animation logic, which assumes a static board. A simple CSS rotation would seem to get it 90% of the way there, but there are lots of animation effects with jewels, movement, and collisions that would look awkward or broken and would take some effort and time to fix.

2. It would lead to confusion for players teaching or asking questions about the game using the "Show Cursor" feature. Even if people aren't using that feature, it's generally helpful when teaching a game digitally if everyone is looking at the same thing. Since we don't have the physicality of pointing at something in space, we would say something like "the deposit deck in the lower right", which would end up on another corner on someone else's screen.

3. It would multiply the possibility of interface bugs and make them way harder to resolve.

I'm still open to the possibility of adding this as a non-default user preference while it's in Beta if enough people want it, but this just gives an idea of what's involved. I know 7 Wonders and various trick-taking games orient player tableaus spatially, but I'm not aware of any BGA implementations that rotate an actual board based on a user's point of view. If you know of any, I'd be interested to see the community's response to that feature.

Thanks for playing, and for your feedback!