Hey everyone,
This update addresses several issues players reported over the past week. Thanks for taking the time to let me know.
AI variety
The AI was too predictable, you'd see the same openings and the same moves every game. We've reworked the opening system and fixed a bug in move selection that caused the AI to always pick the exact same move in any given position. Games against the same bot should now feel different each time, while each difficulty level plays at the same strength as before.
Rating persistence
A bug in the save system caused player ratings to reset to 800 on every game restart. The ratings were being saved to disk correctly, but the loading code skipped the ratings field when reading the file back — so it always fell back to the default value. Fixed. Ratings that were already lost unfortunately can't be recovered, but all future progress will persist.
League standings
Players reported that all other teams in their league division showed 0 points. The match simulation function was reading from the wrong data path internally, it looked for matchday data one level too high in the save structure, causing it to silently fail. AI teams now correctly simulate their matches each round and the standings table updates properly.
That said, the league system is one of the more complex parts of the game. If you notice anything off with standings, match results, or season progression, please let me know!
Other fixes
Piece proportions — all pieces were rendered at the same size (88% of the square). Pieces now scale by type: King is largest, then Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Pawn smallest.
Campaign 1 puzzle fix — "Bishop vs Knight" (scenario 4) had its second step duplicated from the first, making the intended capture sequence broken. The correct move order is now in place.
Save migration — the default piece set was renamed internally from "classic" to "staunton". Players with older saves will have this updated automatically on load.
Controller input — improved gamepad navigation. If you play on a controller or Steam Deck, we'd appreciate hearing what works and what doesn't.
Localization — piece names, the override setting, and rating labels are now translated in all 16 languages.
If you run into anything, let us know in the discussion thread.
Thank you so much for playing and I hope to see you on the board!