Just a quick update that Passant is launching on August 11th (in 4 days)! I'll tease more content over on Discord, but I just want to highlight some of the most recent changes to the game which addresses a lot of the feedback I was getting from the demo.
First of all, here's a sneak peak of the beginning of the new trailer which shows some new badges and effects:
Beginner Mode and AI Improvements
There's now a beginner mode for the AI, that will play unoptimal moves (up to a point). It's probably one of the most fun ways to play if you're just looking to play quick games without too much thought.
I've also made a lot of improvements to the AI over the last 6-7 months since the demo launched. This includes bug fixes (where the AI would make clearly bad moves or illegal moves), as well as improvements to the AI's understanding of badges and win conditions. Previously the AI was not aware of the multiple check win condition for example, but it now is.
I want to make a more dedicated post on the AI at some point as it's super interesting.
More Synergy with badges
This is one of the things I wish I had more of in the demo. A lot of the new badges synergise with the badges in the demo and vice versa and I've had playtesters surprise me with builds that synergise in ways I hadn't considered, which was pretty cool.
An example of badges synergising would be:
the new badge that makes square modifier badges trigger twice on match start (or the other that makes them trigger again once used),
one that makes modifiers gained in a match permanent (alongside various badges that allow you to gain modifiers in a match)
or two new badges shown in the gif above - 1 spawns useless target dummys when you lose a piece and the other temporarily upgrades pieces next to the king (making them not so useless). This gets even better if you can find a way to gain multiple kings or better kings somehow...
Difficulty more generally
There have been discussions about the game being 1. too easy and 2. too hard. Obviously the issue is that for beginners it was too hard, but it's maybe been easy for people who play chess regularly.
The demo was just a taster, so difficulty does change quite a bit as you add more challenges and reach stages 4 and 5, but I've also made the following changes:
The value of your opponent's setups has been adjusted to make things easier for beginners
A hard mode which increases the difficulty past the original demo's has been unlocked as a challenge mode by default (this makes more of a difference in stages 4 and 5)
There's now a beginner AI level - As discussed above
New languages
I've added Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese translations (alongside the existing English, German, Russian, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese translation). If you find any issues with these please let me know over on the discord.
Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions. I'm most available over on Discord, but I'll try to monitor the comments here as long as possible.
All the best,
Marc