Chess Survivors cover
Chess Survivors screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Indie

Chess Survivors

Patch Notes 0.3.0.0
tl;dr QOL changes to the turns and player clicking, game is now number of turns to survive, number balancing, minor tweaks/bug fixes.


Note from Developer
This patch was aimed at smoothing out the player’s turn. Previously the enemy actions occurred mid turn which created a giant information spike. This resulted in the turn feeling too quick since the player didn’t have enough time to process the new information. The new turns should smooth that out and allow the player to play at their own pace, while also keeping them from taking too much time. Now that the game loop is feeling a lot better I’m planning on tackling the relic system which will give powerful global buffs to the player. I think the game is starting to feel really good, and I’m excited to keep iterating and improving it.
Cheers,
Aarimous

Detailed Notes:

  • Updated turn timer. The goal here was to smooth out the turn without removing the fun challenge that a quick turn timer brings to the game

    • Turn is now broken into 4 phases:
    • Player Select: 70% of the turn where the player can select a tile, selected a tile ends this phase
    • Player Move: 5% of the turn where the player character moves
    • Ability: 12.5% of the turn where the player abilities fire and resolve themselves
    • Enemy Turn: 12.5% of the turn where the enemies move or attack

  • Turn length set to 3 seconds. Although in practice the turns are much shorter as the player will end
    he turn early most of the time.
  • Players end the “Player Select” phase upon selecting a tile. The goal here was to keep the game feeling snappy instead of making the player wait around for the next turn. I also wanted to make each click matter.
  • Players can end turns early by pressing the spacebar. In some cases the player might not want to move so this will allow them to pass the turn in that case without needing to wait too long.
  • The old on select indicator now shows when a player hovers the piece. This is to bring visual clarity to the tile the player is going to click on. I’m hoping this prevents a few miss clicks as the clicks now cause an action to happen.
  • XP Value Tweeks. With the smoothing out of the turn the game felt a lot easier to compensate, the amount of XP needed for levels had been increased.

    • Base XP needed for first level set to 5 (previously 4)
    • XP per level growth up to 4 (previously 3)

  • Player health has been increased to 50 (previously 15) and enemy attack damage has been increased. With the addition of melee kills healing 1 health, enemy damage felt too easy to heal from and the player could easily finish the demo. The old number also didn’t give a lot of wiggle room for balancing.

    • Pawn damage 2 (previously 1)
    • Knight damage 3 (previously 1)
    • Rook damage 5 (previously 1)
    • Bishop damage 5 (previously 1)

  • Game clock was refactored to now allow for scaling the game faster/slower and the game will adjust accordingly. This also means that I had to rework some of the ways the abilities fire (cribbage, playing card, yoyo).

    • Game length is set to be 600 turns
    • Demo is set to be 200 turns
    • Added a run clock to show the player how long the current run has been for. This should create a speed run for those interested.

  • Movement Powerups change. The old power ups would override your movement pattern which was interesting, but felt bad. So the aim here was to make them feel more useful. Clarity and scaling will be addressed in future patches.

    • Now append their power ups to the current set.
    • Movement Power ups color matches XP gems
    • Movement power ups now spawn less frequently

  • Miscellaneous:

    • Movement Powerups now
    • Player now has red damage text when taking damage from enemies
    • Cleaned up some unused signals
    • Reorganized the games folder structure
    • Added buttons that link to a google form for feedback
    • Tuned the difficulty curve slightly

  • Random Bug Fixes:

    • Fixed a bug where the end screen's main menu button was redirecting to steam page
    • Fixed a bug where the health could be negative on the UI
    • Probably some other bugs I’ve forgotten about
    • Fixed a bug with Jack Trap where it wasn’t getting removed from the tile when an enemy trigger it




Patch Notes for Chess Survivors Demo Build 0.2.2.8
tl;dr melee kills now also give +1 health, left-click or spacebar now undo movement selection, changed the game music, slightly adjusted the difficulty curve for first knight wave, updated the menus, added an “about” screen, and fixed some bugs.

Note from Aarimous (Developer)


The aim of this patch was to address some small quality of life issues as well as some game breaking bugs. From here my plan will be to overhaul the turn timing to smooth out the experience without removing the unique challenge that quick-turn movement brings. I believe this is a balancing act between allowing you enough time to process and react, but not so much time that you get to plan too much. From there I’ll be working on a relic system which will grant the player powerful buffs and enable unique builds. Finally, I have plans to revisit many of the systems such as the upgrades, enemies, and consumables. Thank you for playing the demo, I still can’t believe that I actually have a game on steam.
Cheers,
Aarimous

Detailed Patch Notes



  • Changed the game's music to now switch between two songs.

    • The old music was too intense, repetitive, and far too short. The goal with these new songs was to find music that is “good enough” until I can find/commission better music.

  • Left-click or Spacebar now undo movement selection

    • Simple quality of life thing so players are not punished by a mis-click

  • Melee kills will now restore 1 health to the player.

    • This was an idea brought up by the YouTube creator Retromation. We will see how this feels, but right now I think this is a nice little reward for players who take the time to melee enemies. Eventually the melee damage will be something the player can scale, so I could see this healing also becoming something they can scale.

  • Slightly adjusted the spawn rate of Knights during the first phase they appear. Spawn pawn weight increased from 3->4.

    • The goal of this was to smooth out the number of knights that can appear at once. The curve seems to increase too quickly from pawns to knights. This change is very small but should result in spawning pawns 80% and knights 20%. Previously this ratio was 75% pawns and 25% knights. The whole curve will be continually adjusted over time.

  • Updated menus and added an About Screen

    • [Added a lot of new buttons for Wishlist, Aarimous socials accounts, press kit, and main menu. This should make the game feel a little more polished and make it easier to navigate the game

  • Minor Bug Fixes

    • Added a screen manager so that popups & pause screens can overlap. There were some bugs that resulted from the player pressing the pause screen and unpausing it which created bad game states.
    • Fixed a bug where the movement tile would not be updated when a player was killed. This resulted in fewer tiles being movable to should be.


Newer posts