Master of Chess News

We're getting closer to releasing this game. Alpha build is out and being tested.

If you're interested in helping out, jump to my discord: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q.

[h3]CORB coming in a week[/h3]

In exactly week from now 26th of February, Chess Opening Repertoire Builder is coming out. Wishlist it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2755460/



[h3]What's happening with Master of Chess?[/h3]

The game is progressing with a nice and steady pace. There's improvements all around, but the biggest ones are around:

• Tournaments - this is a big part of the game loop, your player character playing many tournaments and progressing through the ranks so it makes sense I've finally took some time to give it justice. The UI of it is completely changed, the tournaments are generated with more idea behind them, and there's other types of tournaments now except the Swiss one. I've probably forgot some things but you get the gist.
  
• Openings - Did I tell you about CORB? Well, that's a small app I extracted from MoC and it helped pinpoint some issues Openings feature have in Master of Chess. There's plenty of improvements I did there and plenty more to come
  
• Avatars - Ever looked at the NPC avatars in the game and thought wow do those look weird? Well, it's because they were placeholders for the real deal. There's plenty of work around it in the background to make them consistent and awesome.
  
• Puzzles - Having just a couple puzzles to test your knowledge out is a thing of the past. Thousands of new puzzles have been added, but also some logic to track you puzzle rating and to pick appropriate puzzle difficulty over time
  
• UX niceties - or more commonly known as QOL improvements. I improved the match review screen in many ways and squashed couple of bugs. Also, a feature that was requested many times: picking what to promote to, has been added.
  

Now these are just things that pop into my mind right now, there's probably tens of other things I added or fixed in the meantime.

[h3]What's next?[/h3]

I'll spend the next week mostly focused on getting CORB to be clean and useful for users. It's going to be my first release on Steam so I want to do it justice. Then, the idea is to focus on Openings feature more, and to integrate it completely into gameplay. After that, I think the game will be ready for closed beta and we can take it from there.

Bye bye!

It's 2024, it's the year MoC comes out. And if everything goes well it should be out in couple of months. It's weird writing those words when there's so much more to do, but I'm excited for it. Future is bright!

If you want to talk chess or game development, join here: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q.




It's been so long since last demo version that it's hard for me to list out what has changed. Better question would be: what hasn't!? You'll find threats detection feature (you'll know it when you see it), a much improved AI, more polished UI, improvements in UX, more translations. Everything changed. (for the better, I hope!)


I've added as much as I've removed to deliver a more focused and polished version of the demo. So the demo no longer contains:

• 📰 Separate Tutorial screen. It's now built in the first match.
  
• 🤵 Player creation process. I wanted to let the player see the game in action as soon as possible. You're immediately presented with pre-created player from France - Matteo Martin.
  
• 🔑 Key Moments simulation. I don't have good explanation why, it just was too buggy after I added many AI improvements in the game and I decided to cut it out for a moment.
  

There's two threads I'm trying to follow.

First and foremost I'm looking into creating an alpha build of MoC. There's plenty of work to do, but I think I'm getting close. It will be rough, but it will be first real insight into the full game.

Secondly, I'm working on releasing a completely free app about chess opening repertoire creation. When folks saw the opening graph screenshots, a lot of comments were about how they would be interested in something like that, even if it was standalone. Now they can have it!

So a lot more work left. Check out the new demo and let me know what you think!

Heya!
It's 2024. It's the year Master of Chess gets released.

Safe to say I'm really excited for this year and my projects. If you're not visiting here often you might be wondering what's the latest state of the game. So here it is:

[h3]The Plan[/h3]

• I'm working on a FREE chess app about Chess Openings that I've extracted away from Master of Chess. It's called Chess Opening Repertoire Builder (CORB) and I plan to release it in February. It's my way of saying thank you to the chess community while simultaneously getting experience with releasing games on Steam.
  
• I'm upgrading the Demo. The newest update doesn't bring many new improvements but is more focused on polishing the existing experience. Expect an update in January.
  
• I'm preparing first alpha build of Master of Chess which I'll release on Itch.io. It's the biggest milestone of the game and I'll do my best to deliver it this month. This work is on hold right now because of some workstation issues but I should continue working on it soon.
  

Big thanks to everyone that have reached out and gave me their piece of mind. It's of great help in shaping this game. I'm loving it, I'm excited for what future holds.

Happy new year and lets stop the blunders!

BRANE

Steam Next Fest is long gone and it was an amazing ride!

• ✅ Hundreds of new wishlists (wishlist the game if you haven't!)
  
• 🎥 1600+ people at one point watching me stream the game
  
• 📢 Amazing feedback from the new players
  

Join discord here: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q to get daily updates on the game and provide your feedback!

[h2]What next?[/h2]

With that wind in my sails it is time to work on getting this game over the finish line. I worked past two weeks on creating the tournament experience. Couple of thousands tournaments later, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out (it will get a lot better after players get their hands on it)



So even though tournaments do need more love, I'll focus on the Match AI next as that was the biggest pain that the players experienced. After this work, I hope ELO will reflect more the strength of the AI you're facing.

At that point I'll release the new and last (I hope) version of the Demo.

From that point onwards all my efforts will be to get an early build of the full game out. This means finally adding the Openings feature, Finances management, redoing all the avatars in game, balancing the progression, fixing bugs (and those that I introduce on the way) and adding couple more smaller features.

All in all, it's exciting time for the game and I'm really happy with the way things are going.

Let's make chess fun for everyone!

The next week is probably the most exciting one since I started developing this game.

Steam Next Fest is a big thing for indie developers. So I made sure to polish my demo as much as possible before the festival began.




The new version brings loads of UX and QOL improvements.
But two features elevate the game completely:

- 🔎 Match review rewrite
- 👨‍🎓 Translations in multiple languages


I'm making this stream so I show the latest features and to record a stream for Steam Next fest. Join me!

Let's make chess fun for everyone!