The Chess World Championship Match is just around the corner. Chess world is buzzing! I'm rooting for Ding. I love a good comeback story.

The work on the game doesn't stop. Just in time to get that Chess World Champion title before the match. This build has the most significant amount of changes I made ever since I released to Early Access. Most of it might not be visible to you but the game is now completely different under the 'facade'.

I've been listening to you and tried to implement as much as possible. You can always reach me on discord: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q to give your suggestions.

Here's a list of changes:

• 🦎 Switch to Lizard chess engine!
• 💻 Improve the AI.
• 🆕 Add Buchholz system for Swiss tournaments.
• 🎨 Add colorful line drawing on the board. (hold shift/CTRL)
• 🐛 Fix bug with board flipping in analysis screen.
• ➡️ Add full move continuations in analysis screens.
• 🎨 Improve look of match simulation modal.
• 🔄 Improve Swiss pairing.
• 🐛 Fix bug with tournament population that excluded the player's entry.
• 🕰️ Fix bug with game breaking after time runs out in a match.
• 🔧 Refactor energy usage.
• ⏰ Add 'Get a job' event for broke adults 😅

Switch to Lizard engine?​

It's a big change. The game is now integrated with the powerful Lizard engine. Lizard is MIT licensed and written in C#. Perfect.

Lizard's CCRL Blitz Elo is 3749, around 70 points below the almighty Stockfish. (source: https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404)

The game doesn't use UCI protocol anymore, enabling it to run in only one process. At first glance, it might seem like a step backward. You can't easily replace the engine with another chess engine (Stockfish, Leela...) now. But it was never my intention to allow this. It can always be implemented for the analysis part of the match, though!

Improving the AI​

It was a perfect time to look into this. I've tried my best to reduce the number of 'stupid' moves - the ones where you capture a piece but AI just ignores it and does not recapture. It's not perfect yet but I think it got a lot better. I've used Lichess as a playground for my bots in order to calibrate the strength. Lichess has been immensely helpful throughout MoC's development.

Breaking saves​

As I said, I've changed a lot of things! It's only fair I warn you: your saves might be corrupted now. I say 'might' because I'm not sure. I've not taken significant measures to ensure backwards compatibility so it could be a rough transition. Be warned!

The big bucks​

⚠ Price increase from 0.8.x -> $19.99 ⚠

0.7.x is the last iteration of Master of Chess with base price of $14.99. From 0.8.x it's going up to $19.99. The game is growing and maturing. The value of it is increasing and I'm feeling more and more confident with each new build. It's worth that much and I'm ready to flip the switch.

But hey, you don’t care—you already bought the game, right? 😋

What's next?​

After I clear out all the bugs introduced by 0.7.x, I'll continue improving MoC. For 0.8.x the plan is to add:

• Coaches
• Improve openings
• Exhibition Matches Openings were always a thorn in my backside from game design perspective. I butchered it a lot. Time to give it some love.

In the meantime I might go back to Demo and polish it up. It's heavily out of sync with the base game. Might give people bad first impression.

Thanks for reading. If you haven't already, give Master of Chess a try. :)

Cheers!

My friend Lorenzo and I are making a new game. We've been planning it for a long time.

I'm going to keep rest of it secret, but here's a screenshot:

Test out Master of Chess!​

It's been a long loooong trip and the rocky part is yet to come. Early access release is coming very soon (I'll drop the announcement at the end of May). That's why I need your help (*insert 'once more I'm asking for your support' meme) to test out Master of Chess.

Known problems​

• The progress of your player character is not balanced and it's what I'm working on right now. He progresses too fast, with some playtesters having World Champion players younger than 17 (try to beat that, Gukesh!)
• Knockout tournament doesn't simulate properly with skipping rounds. (I already fixed this one, and will be part of next release)
• Names generation totally wrong for some countries
• Trophies rendering wrongly when the room is full
• Some minor issues with tournament qualification logic

Your tasks​

To have fun with the game as much as possible! And to report whenever the game didn't allow you to. Things like:

• Obvious game-crashing bugs
• Minor grievances when the game makes something you want to do hard for no good reason
• Unusual slowness and poor optimization

My plan​

I must fix the problems I listed and also those that will be reported in the meantime. I also want to conjure up some kind of marketing campaign but obviously I don't know how. If you know a streamer that could be interested in streaming the game let me/them know!

A new demo version is out! While most of my and community's efforts go into testing and improving the alpha version of the game, I had to move some of that improvements back into the demo version of the game.

If you want to join the community or check out the alpha join here: https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q.

• 🤵 All previous avatar sprites were removed. With help from my talented friend Lorenzo, we updated all of the avatars in the game. Aging of characters finally makes sense.
• Many QOL improvements were added like threat detection, material count, promotion etc.
• Numerous bugs were squashed

What's next?

• I'm working on the alpha version of the game non-stop. Community at discord is hard at work finding and reporting numerous improvements/bugs
• I've added a lot of logic around tournaments and looking into creating save games next
• This amazing work around avatars wouldn't be complete if I wouldn't return the Player creation screen

Last but not least

Have I mentioned that my free Opening Repertoire app is available on Steam? https://store.steampowered.com/app/2755460/Chess_Opening_Repertoire_Builder

I'm improving it from time to time, but Master of Chess is where most of the efforts go. Take a look at it if you're interested in chess openings.

It's time to give a freebie to the chess community. After several people suggested, I decided to do it, and created a separate app from Openings feature of Master of Chess: Chess Opening Repertoire Builder or CORB.

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

• 📰 Lets you make a graph of your chess opening knowledge.
• 🤵 Gives you option to quiz yourself on your openings knowledge
• 📚 Gives you option to search through Openings DB

It's available on Steam from February 26th: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2755460/Chess_Opening_Repertoire_Builder/

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!)

What's gone?

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.

What's the plan?

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:

The Plan​

• 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 simultanously 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. 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!

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!

Heya! By this time next week there's going to be a new version of the Demo out.

What's great about it? The game will be translated in couple of languages! MoC community stepped in and it seems we'll have the game translated to (at least) Russian, Polish, Swedish, Portuguese, French, Serbian, Vietnamese and German!

If you want to improve the existing translations or you'd like to contribute your own language join us on our discord https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q.

What's next

1️⃣ As mentioned I plan to update the demo one more time before Steam Next Fest. It's a big event for me and for the game. We're both first time there.

🖼 So there's many improvements to UI/UX to make the game cool for the new folks.

But talk is cheap, I'll go back to working on the game and I hope you'll be there next week to test it out on your own.

Let's make chess fun for everyone!

BRANE

The biggest update to the game since the day I opened it to the testers is here! Try it out on Steam or itch.

Join the discord to give me some feedback:https://discord.gg/HYV8Zz8V2Q. Every bit of information helps!

The New build​

Version 0.2.1 is out!

It includes:

• 🔑 Amazing new feature Key Moments Simulation: let your character play all the moves except crucial moments in the game

• 🧩 Total rewrite of Puzzles Training feature: It's fast, it's bug free (prove me wrong! :P), there's 10 Puzzles to solve now. There's puzzle streaks to accomplish.

• 👨 Total redesign of Create Player Screen: again enjoy in selecting the skills of your player and even the most requested feature of having the male character with long hair is there.

• ✉ Personal screen looks completely different too

• 🖼 Probably every part of the game got a little bit of love, an animation here, a colorful icon there - it is all going towards a unified vision I have for the game.

What's next?​

I started work on the Openings feature (the cool graph you can see in the game screenshots). It's the last big feature that I plan to add to the game. I'll also look into improving and fixing smaller bugs on the demo before it reaches Steam Next fest.