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A hundred chess games on Steam. One of them gives you 40 AI opponents up to 2550 Elo, live open lobbies, async play, a league mode and lessons that turn beginners into threats. You already know which one this is.

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Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

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11:29am

Hey everyone 👋

It's still just me back here, so updates tend to come in waves. I go quiet, head down for a while, then surface with a pile of things I built straight from your feedback. This is one of those, and it turned into a big one. Thank you for every bug report and every "wouldn't it be cool if" in the meantime. It genuinely all lands on my desk.

Here's what's new, and why I built it.

💬 You can actually talk to your opponents now I'd given the bots real personality in how they play, but you still couldn't actually talk to any of them. So now you can. In offline matches you can chat with your opponent and they answer in character: they know they're a Chess Kingdom regular, they've got their own backstory and taste, they react to how the game is going, and they remember what you said earlier. Over 50 of them, each their own person. The part I care about most: it runs entirely on your own machine. Nothing you type ever leaves your PC, there's no account and no server. It's a bit heavy on VRAM but It's completely optional and off by default. Flip it on in Settings and it grabs a one-time download the first time. It's a little surreal when a bot you just beat starts grumbling about it.

🏆 The League is a real season now The League used to be a ladder you climbed and not much else. A season should feel like a journey. So each one now opens with a proper kickoff: you choose the length, you get a pre-season forecast ("predicted to finish 4th of 6"), and a Brief with a few real objectives to chase. Every fixture comes with a build-up showing the actual stakes, your head-to-head, and who's in form. You get a rival each season (a real one, pulled from your own history, not invented for you), a tense run-in over the final games, and an Awards Night when it's done. There's also a Kingdom Cup, a knockout drawn across every division so a minnow can land a giant. And a Legacy screen that tracks your whole career: a trophy cabinet, your records, and a Hall of Champions. Every competitor flies a flag now, too.

🧩 Puzzles that don't argue with you Nothing stings like finding a quicker mate and being told you're wrong. Puzzles now accept any move that delivers checkmate (and any solution that's genuinely just as strong), not only the one scripted line. While I was in there I ran all ~192,000 puzzles through an independent checker and fixed a batch that were showing the wrong "Mate in N." Puzzle Rush's timer no longer freezes after the first problem, and every puzzle now shows its ID, so if one looks off you can tell me exactly which.

♟️ A sharper, more varied AI A few of you noticed the bots reaching for the same opening every single game. They now pull from a much deeper library of real grandmaster theory and genuinely vary their lines, so games feel fresh and the opening play is stronger, not weaker (making them more interesting without making them dumber is the one line I refuse to cross). I also fixed a timing quirk where a bot could mull for ages and then play something strange.

🎨 A cleaner classic board The default 2D pieces were rough: the bishop looked far too much like the pawn and the knight was a bit of a mess. I swapped them for a crisp, classic, instantly-readable set. Small thing, but it's the thing you stare at all game.

⚙️ ...and a tidy-up Settings is reorganised into proper tabs instead of one endless scroll, plus the usual mountain of smaller fixes across puzzles, league, and a few crash-y spots, most of them straight from your reports.

Three thank-yous that earned their own line. silverleaf1: your puzzle reports (the mislabeled mates, the frozen Rush timer, the Masters section) turned into real fixes in this update. Way2Kool: your Steam Deck reports were the thread I pulled to untangle the whole Deck situation and as always Umikaze your contiues feedback is a blessing. All Absolute heroes. 🙏

The opponent chat is the part I'm equal parts proud and nervous about, so if you switch it on, I'd really love to hear how it felt to actually talk to the other side of the board. Got a bug or a "wouldn't it be cool if"? Throw it in the forums, it comes straight to me, and as this update hopefully proves, it tends to actually happen.

If you wanne support please consider picking up the bundle. It's very cheap now in the Summer sale:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/77440/Chess__Checkers__Snake/
and last but not least I have a New trailer!

https://youtu.be/szaSMApZ9Cs

Thanks for playing one solo dev's chess game. See you on the board. ♟️

Chess Kingdom

Thanks for Playing! Your Feedback & Reviews Are a Huge Help

Thank you to everyone who's picked up Chess Kingdom! As a solo developer, hearing from players means everything. If you have any feedback, things you love, things that could be better, features you'd like to see, drop a comment here. I read everything and it directly shapes what I work on next. And if you're enjoying the game, a Steam review would be a massive help. It helps other chess fans find the game and keeps me going! Thanks for the support, more updates coming soon....

Pflanz

17 Jun @ 12:33am

General Discussions

Puzzles Section

It would help players to know what to work on if there were some mastery standard for each section. The standards might show up as accomplishments.

silverleaf1

19 Jun @ 2:12pm

General Discussions

♟️ The Big One - Online Lobbies, Smarter Opponents & a Whole Lot More

5 Jun

Hey everyone 👋

It's just me here — Chess Kingdom is a one-person project — so sometimes it takes a while before I can properly update you on what's happening. But I keep listening to the feedback, looking at the data, and updating based on it. I'm genuinely grateful for all the feedback I'm getting.

Here's what's new, and why I built it.

🌐 You can actually play real people now
Why: chess is meant to be played against humans, but I simply didn't have enough players online at once to make that interesting. Now there are lobbies, though, so you can open a lobby and then leave. When other players come along, they'll see it on their main menu and can jump in. And since it's all async, you don't have to sit in the game continuously.

🤖 Opponents you'll actually remember
Beating one bot felt like beating all of them — they were kind of interchangeable. I wanted real characters. The problem was that "personality" usually means "plays worse," and I really didn't want to dumb anyone down. So I found a way to give each bot real taste — aggressive ones hunt, positional ones squeeze, defensive ones dig in — without making a single one weaker. (I stress-tested that part more than anything else in this update. 😅)

🔍 Learn something from every game
This is a game you're supposed to improve at, but the old analysis basically said "the engine preferred this move," which teaches you nothing. Now it tells you what your move actually did: hung a piece, walked into a fork, missed a pin. Plus a cleaner analysis screen, a graded Endgame Trainer, and Daily Training that quietly drills the exact things you keep getting wrong.

🌍 Play for your country
Chess is the most global game there is, felt a shame not to lean into it. So: pick from 197 nations, jump into a one-click country quick-match, and climb the new Player and Country leaderboards (with a Hall of Fame right on the menu). A little friendly "my flag vs. yours."

🏅 More to chase
I wanted the journey to feel like a journey. So there are now 20 prestige frames to earn, plus budding rivalries, bonds with the AIs, win-streak rewards, and daily & weekly challenges you can actually click into.

🎨 A fresher look and a friendlier start
Too many new players bounced in the first ten minutes, thrown in cold, or staring at a dated menu. So the game now teaches you the rules (if you choose to) before any real pressure, throws a little party for your first win, and gently points you at a good next move. Oh, and a redesigned dark main menu + juicier captures, because it should feel good too.

♿ For more players, in more places
"Supports accessibility" should mean something. The old colorblind mode only recolored one thing — basically fake, and that bugged me. Now it uses shapes, not just colors. Add to that 31 languages, screen-reader fixes, better controller / Steam Deck support, faster Deck startup, and controller-remapping + cloud-save restored to Settings.

🐛 …and a small mountain of bug fixes
Being a solo dev who actually reads the forums and fixes things is kind of the whole point. Tournament colors, a nasty rating-corruption bug, several crash-y buttons, giant avatars, puzzle & league fixes — most of them came straight from your reports.

And one thank-you that deserves its own line: Umikaze, you've been sending feedback and bug reports almost non-stop, and a real chunk of this update exists because of you. Absolute hero. 🙏

This was a big one! The online lobbies are the part I'm equal parts proud and terrified of, so if you open one (or rescue someone who's been waiting), I'd genuinely love to hear how it felt. Got a bug or a "wouldn't it be cool if…"? Throw it in the forums, it lands straight on my desk, and as this whole update proves, it tends to actually happen.

Thanks for playing one solo dev's chess game. See you on the board. ♟️

Chess Kingdom

Sections on Chess Concepts

In many cases better moves are available. Examples are kings not stepping aside when the enemy king is already far behind the pawn. In a middle game position the answer was capturing a pawn when a pawn move forking two pieces was available. In many endgame positions the king should be activated sooner. The section on concepts would benefit from quizzes to evaluate mastery. More examples are desperately needed....

silverleaf1

16 Jun @ 1:27am

General Discussions

Screenshot

Award

Scintilus

View screenshots

careful it locked up my steamdeck.

ran the game and it completely locked my steamdeck up. had to force restart

Way2Kool

19 Jun @ 11:38pm

General Discussions

Masters Section

In some positions a better move is available. For in one the knight move to d6 does block but the white rook can take the enemy rook with mate. In the first position where the player must choose a move moving the queen to the seventh rank is stronger.

silverleaf1

24 Jun @ 2:59am

General Discussions

Chess Kingdom — Save, share, and analyze your games - plus a big bug sweep!

23 May

Hey everyone,

I haven't posted here in a while — that doesn't mean development stopped. I keep reading every review and fixing things as quickly as I can. So I figured I'd do a catch-up post on everything that's changed. Please keep the feedback coming — I'll keep making the game better.

What's new

Export your games as PGN. Save any finished match as a .pgn. It's in Two places: a button on the post-game screen, and in your profile under Recent Games (where you can also export your last 5 games as one bundle).

Save your game as an image or animated GIF. Same post-game row got two siblings: a 1280×720 share-card image of the final position, and a GIF replay of the last 5 moves.

What got fixed

Study & Compete features that didn't work for everyone. Opening Explorer, Endgame Trainer, Guess the Move and Tournaments were all reachable but broken for some — empty boards, crashes, no progress. All four work end-to-end now. Tournament wizard also got a follow-up fix: the format you picked actually looks selected, and "Invite Friend" no longer crashes.

A puzzle that was already checkmate. One of the Perpetual Check puzzles in chapter 6 started with Black already mated, so it was literally unsolvable. Fixed, and I added a build-time check that scans every training puzzle (196 of them) for this kind of mistake — so this can't happen again.

A "fork" lesson that taught a losing fork. The Queen Fork lesson in chapter 2 had a position where the "correct" move just hung the queen. I replaced it with a real, sound fork.

"Opponent moves twice" feeling. On slow hardware the engine could accept your next move before the previous animation finished, so the next reply visually stacked on top. Now the engine waits for the animation to land.

Settings reverting to defaults / music too loud / Ctrl+- zooming you out and never coming back. Three bugs from a single very thorough report. All fixed:

Settings (especially music mute) now stick across screen visits.
The master volume slider now actually attenuates music in real time, including while dragging.
Ctrl+- (and Ctrl+wheel) can no longer zoom you out into an unreadable UI. Existing damage from before this patch is also undone automatically next launch.

Dutch translation gaps on the Campaign card and a few lesson screens — all filled in.

Steam Deck launches faster and more reliably. A startup crash, two long freezes during launch, and a generally slow cold-load on Deck have all been tracked down and fixed. Windows launch is also about 3 seconds faster.

Translation quality across older lessons. An audit caught around 1,600 strings (especially in older lesson content) where translations had English sentence structure with foreign words substituted in — reading awkwardly. Re-translating those is its own focused pass, scheduled separately. In the meantime, the brand title is now consistent across all 24 languages and several broken Turkish strings are fixed.

A real thank-you

A lot of this update started with someone on this forum or in a review taking the time to write down what was wrong. In particular:

samantha_kers987 — your report covered four separate issues in one post and was unusually detailed. The zoom bug was the kind of thing that genuinely blocks someone from playing, and I wouldn't have caught it without you flagging exactly what you pressed. Thank you.

Umikaze — the broken Perpetual Check puzzle was a perfect bug report. You named the lesson, described the position, and explained why the prompt didn't match what was on the board. That made the fix straightforward, and it pushed me to build the validator that's now guarding the whole puzzle set.

To the player who flagged the Queen Fork lesson and the "opponent moves twice" feeling — sorry I don't have a name to put here. If you see this, thank you. Both were real and both are fixed.

To the player whose Steam Deck kept crashing — same. The fix took a while because the cause was three separate things stacked, but each one is now addressed.

To everyone who hit a save-data scare after the 1.0 update and reported it on the forum or in reviews — the recovery code now finds your old saves automatically. If you still don't see your progress, please post and I'll help directly.

If you've run into something that isn't in this list, please post about it. I read everything, and "small" reports often turn out to be the most useful ones.

If you are looking to support, please leave a review. Good, or bad it both really helps!

Thank you so much!

Chess Kingdom

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