The new knight's tour-inspired puzzle mode is here! :D
GIGACHESS V1.13 CHANGELOG
- Knight's Dungeon mode added, offering 40 new puzzle stages based on moving a Knight around all open squares of the board (way more info below!)
- The ability to permanently disable turn auto-advance added, the blue switches on either side of the turn advance button can now be clicked a 2nd time to enable a permanent manual mode, requiring an ongoing deliberate click of the turn advance button or spacebar to end your turn
- Smoother transitions when selecting game modes from the main menu added
- A chain counting bug affecting Tutorial mode where hits from the previous lesson could contribute to the chain tally for the following lesson fixed
- A layering bug where the level preview pane at the Puzzle Attack level selector could appear above the exit prompt blackout fixed
Added later via quiet patch:
- Pawns are now able to spawn in the middle two rows of the board when playing on Expert & Master difficulties in Endless mode
- A permanent on-screen indicator of Shieldguard progress added to the bottom right of the play area during Endless, Puzzle Attack & Tutorial modes
- Dynamically resizing HUD counters added, allowing much larger numbers of Waves, Hits & SP to be displayed without overlap
- Help panels added during the party builder screen of Endless mode, drawing attention to party size & difficulty configuration
- Performance grades calculated at the end of an Endless game now more heavily weight the use of autosaves as a penalty
- 12 new achievements added for Endless mode, recognizing high performance grades when playing with multiple party sizes & difficulties and some special recognition for teleporting 8 Pawns simultaneously with a single Pawnwarp, getting Cursed a bunch, earning Shieldguard points, etc.
- The threshold for activating a hero piece's Hyper state now adjusts based on party size chosen, lowering the threshold for smaller parties and raising it for larger parties
- Hardcore mode added to Endless mode, an optional toggle that adds additional challenge to any difficulty level selected by reducing starting lives from 10 to 1 and preventing hero pieces from refreshing their Hyper lifespans by scoring hits, meaning any two turns without a hit will break that piece's Hyper state
- Song D has been updated to match the lightly revised cut available in the downloadable soundtrack
- Tooltips added for the turn advance button and auto-advance switch
- Tooltips for party size and difficulty now communicate the current setting for each
- An SP counting bug where loading a quicksave or autosave could occasionally result in the loaded SP value not taking into account the +1 from the most recent All-Strike fixed
- A bug in Tutorial mode where Pawn starting positions could get scrambled when playing with turn advance set to permanent manual fixed
- An inconsistency in the French language stage unlock tooltips in Puzzle Attack mode fixed
- A bug in Endless mode where a Bishop with a Queen-up could stay infinitely Queen-up'd fixed
- A few layering bugs where the turn advance button, the performance grade and performance category text could appear above the exit + load screen blackouts fixed
The Knight's Dungeon concept has been kicking around for a long while but it wasn't until January that work really began on making it playable, having this officially part of the game at long last is a great feeling and I'm excited to share it with everyone! A game mode that's completely non-combat focused and carves interesting dungeon floorplans out of the standard 8x8 board breaks up the Gigachess offering quite nicely, IMO ;)
So if you're not familiar with the classic knight's tour chess puzzle, the idea is incredibly simple: move a knight around the entire chess board, touching each square only once. Turning this into something more video game-like is nothing new, you can find any number of browser-based versions of the knight's tour offering all sorts of board sizes and wild layouts. Here's what a classic 5x5 knight's tour looks like played in Gigachess world:
What makes a stage of the Gigachess Knight's Dungeon mode different, though, is threefold: 1) a given stage may feature up to TWO Knights under your control, 2) shapeshifting tiles are available that temporarily grant the touching Knight either Rook or Bishop movement for 1 turn, and 3) SP is awarded upon a stage exceeding its Par value of turns, allowing the use of Blockades to fill untouched squares (on Easy difficulty, at least!). Quality-of-life features like the ability to rewind through all moves made, to redo the last move and to view the order of a Knight's entire move history via right click round things out a little further :)
There are 40 stages total to play through, ranging from breezy and bite-sized to big and maze-y. I was strongly considering spinning Knight's Dungeon into its own game or releasing this mode as DLC but, well... everyone who's been so lovely as to support Gigachess here on Steam deserves a free expansion, I say! :D
There's more I'll be quietly patching into v1.13 as the week goes on, namely a Hardcore difficulty toggle for Endless mode to present a super duper challenge, additional achievements for Endless mode based around obtaining particular performance grades, dynamically resizing counters for the HUD, some beefed up in-game reference material and a number of other little tweaks. With Knight's Dungeon mode ready to go right now, though, I wanted to get it out in time for the weekend :)
One last important point in this rambling changelog:
If you've had a bit of fun with the game and would like more people to discover it,
Please consider helping Gigachess by leaving a short review <3
Valve recently changed how user reviews are counted and it's unfortunately buried the game a little deeper in the store as a result. For Gigachess or any small indie, a brief review makes a world of difference towards people finding the game more easily. This thing will only improve as more people play it :)
As always, your bug reports and feedback on the community forums are a huge help! Thanks for playing Gigachess, and as always, please let me know whatever's on your mind <3 http://steamcommunity.com/app/415910/discussions