One would be the chests. When we decided to add them to the game, we wanted them to be available in all modes that the game has to offer, so even if someone doesn't like multiplayer, they will be able to have access to this feature. But this system must be protected from hackers and cheaters, which is done through the server-side distribution of all in-game items.

Leaderboards. Each challenge has its own list of players who did really well in that challenge. We don't want them to become meaningless because cheaters would hack the client-based single-player mode, change their resources or cards and achieve some ridiculous results. So again, in order to protect this part of the game, all calculations must be server-based.

It is impossible to create the same experience as we have in Gremlins, Inc. but without the online connection. Not in the world where people hack the games just to ruin other players' fun.

If you want features that in our opinion are important for a healthy gameplay and therefore must be protected by the necessary online connection, you should accept the fact that the Gremlins, Inc. demands online connection. Not for the single-player mode in particular, but for the parts of every mode that we can't leave on the client-side because in that case the game and its players would be at risk of being damaged by cheaters.

If you don't want to accept the necessity of the online connection, which is understandable, you might use Gremlins vs Automatons that exists as exactly what you want – as a single-player mode with no connection to any server. Chests are literally useless there so they don't exist in GvA, and the leaderboards are slightly different but other than that it offers the same functionality as Gremlins, Inc.

This is partly correct. Gremlins, Inc. was the first, followed by GvA about a year later. Why GvA was developed at all if at the beginning we had no plans for any offline mode? This is simple – we didn't expect that the single-player mode would be as popular as it became. We thought that the majority of players will be playing with the real people, not with the bots. So the whole game was designed to provide best online experience possible. Safe and protected, with the features that only an online game might have.

Instead, with time we discovered that almost half of all in-game sessions is played in the single-player. It is obvious that for the single-player an offline mode would be more convenient even without some of the extra features like the chests. So, when it became obvious that there is a demand for the offline mode (and half of the sessions being non-multiplayer is a clear demand) we managed to find time and resources to create it. At that point, it would be too risky to add such drastic change to the same client that we already had, so the new product was created – Gremlins vs Automatons.

You can call us stupid or arrogant for not listening to you from the very beginning if you like. But believe it or not we actually always watch and listen to what our community does and asks – there is no other way for us to know how to develop the game and keep that community alive and active. So far we are doing pretty well I would say but we have no intentions to stop the communication, this is why we are on this forum.