After nearly 10 months of early access, Chess Survivors 1.0 is now fully released! Thank you to everyone who played my little indie game while I continuously worked on and published over 50 patches. A special thank you to anyone who has given me feedback. This game would be nowhere as good as it is today without your gentle encouragement and support. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on bug fixes and balance changes based on your feedback. Then I'll make another update here with any post-release plans for Chess Survivors and what's next for me personally. Cheers, Aarimous P.S. Please consider subscribing to My YouTube Channel where I share my game development as an solo indie dev.

1.0 Patch Notes

New Content

• New Map Consumables System
  • Every so often a random consumable will spawn
    • Potion - heals player
    • Magnet - sucks up all current XP
    • Bomb - creates an explosion dealing damage nearby enemies
    • Frost bomb - creates an explosion freezing nearby enemies
• New Character based on my cat Karl
• New Character based on my cat Martin
• 16 new steam achievements
• New run records system which will show you if you beat your previous stat (for now this is only shown on the game over screen)
• New button on the settings screen to reset the player progress
• New button to the settings screen to reset the records

General Changes and Balancing

Health and Damage Numbers

• Multiplied all the health and damage numbers by 10 since bigger numbers are more fun.
  • Adjusted damage text to fit new scale of numbers
  • Adjust health bar size to fit new scale of numbers
• Ability Damage
  • Increased ability damage values across the board with a focus on making single target abilities really scale at the top end of the upgrade path (more info below)

Elites

• Removed Elite Combat Modifiers
  • These include bonus damage (red), reduced damage (blue), and always move (green)
  • These were boring at best and never got the love they deserve. In their current state they dont feel like they are adding to the game.
• All elites will now drop extra XP when killed, the amount scales with acts
  • Previously non-chest elites could drop bonus XP or a Potion
  • With the new consumable system player should no longer need potions from elites
• All elites now have three times the health, and deal 50% more damage than their normal versions

Enemy and Act Difficulty

• Adjusted the health and damage increases for Act 2 and Act 3
• Adjusted the enemy spawning for the first 100 turns of Act 1
• Increased enemy spawn rates in parts of Act 1
• Added randomness to the Act 2 major spawn event to spawn a wave of either Pawns, Knights, Rook, or Bishops. Previously this was always a wave of pawns.
• Adjusted the act modifiers for Act 2 and Act 3
• Enemy health and damage
  • Increased elite health scale from 300% to 400%
  • Decreased king base health from 300 to 200
  • Increased rook base health from 120 to 135
  • Increased bishop base health from 120 to 130
  • Increased queen base health from 150 to 175
  • Reduced bishop attack range from 3 to 2
  • Increased bishop attack damage from 20 to 30
  • Increased Pawn base health 80 -> 90
  • Increased Knight base health 80 -> 85
  • Added randomness to the Act 2 major spawn event to spawn a wave of either Pawns, Knights, Rook, or Bishops. Previously this was always a wave of pawns.

Abilities

• Jack Trap
  • Reworked this ability as the original version was unfun
  • Sets a trap to your current tile which will trigger when an enemy collides with it dealing damage to the enemy and launching projectiles in random directions. These projectiles will deal damage to other enemies and trigger other traps.
• Cribbage
  • Projectiles now shoot in alternating directions
  • I wanted to make this one a bit easier to use since it will be the first ability a player gets, this ability also resembles the starting ability from Vampire survivors. As such, Im hoping this will act as a good tutorial ability for players.
  • Damage has been reduced since the ability now starts with a base of 2 projectiles and its easier to hit enemies
• Boomerang
  • Reduced the cooldown from [10,8,6] [8,6,4]
  • Increased the damage from [55, 80, 110, 175] [75, 100, 150 250]
• Blizzard
  • Reduced the number of particles from 100 to 50 to improve visual clarity
  • Made the entire effect a bit transparent
• Tic Tac Toe
  • Increased damage from [55, 75, 100, 160] [65, 90, 130, 175]
  • Projectiles now always pierce enemies
  • Reduced cooldown from [4, 3, 2] [3, 2, 1]
  • Increased range from [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] [2, 3, 4, 5]
• Yo-Yo
  • Reduced damage form [40, 85, 100, 120] [40, 65, 100, 150]
• Marble
  • Increased the base pierce now starts a 2 instead of 1
  • Adjusted max number of projectiles to be at 25 at all levels
  • Can now upgrade number of projectiles to 2 in act 1, previously this was locked to act 2

Character Health

• All characters will now gain 20 health when leveling up
• Base health amounts have been reduced by about 50%
• My goal here is to make the early game feel a lot harder, previously it felt like a bad build could easily get by the early game without getting lucky or having good mechanics. This massive health reduction should mostly felt in Act 1. I balanced this around getting to near the same health by the end of the game.
  • Joker 640 350
  • Doll 420 200
  • Evil Monkey 690 333
  • Smol Wizard 540 275
  • Jak 250 120
  • Fishbowl 580 300
  • Ghost 220 185
  • The Real Knight 420 230
  • Koala 500 270
  • Little Robot 630 300
  • Karl 520 260
  • Martin 450 225

Miscellaneous:

• The Real Knight
  • Reworked since the original theme of cant heal, but has a lot of health, ended up being a bit confusing since healing related relics would still spawn.
  • Instead this will be a melee focused character
• Relics
  • Old Smelly Cheese - Removed % max health increase, Added +100 base health increase, Added +20 health gained each level
  • Lucky Crown - Added -5 to Consumable Spawn Rate
  • Magic Carrot - Increased healing amount from 10 to 20
  • Three of Clubs - Increased all damages mods from 30 to 33 (for being on theme)
  • Lost Diadem of the Queen Added +2 to player pierce
  • Ancient Hawacha Rocket Added +2 to range
• Player Base Stats
  • Increased base XP needed to level for 3 to 5. With the elite dropping more XP the player would get to powerful to quickly so I have adjusted this down a bit.
  • Each level the XP requirement will now increase by 4 (previously 3)
• Firewall
  • Increased the spawn delay to match the Meteor and Laser map hazards
• UI
  • Updated the game over screen to show the run stats
  • Update the art of the game over screen
  • Removed XP calculation text as it was just messy
  • Increased the speed the XP bar increased
  • Adjusted other game over UI elements to fit better
  • Update the art on the main menu screen
  • Removed Early Access text from main menu screen
  • Removed the early access developer note from main menu screen
  • Disabled stat tracking as it was useless, and as such removed the data tracking opt in message
  • Fixed the run settings screen to now properly show the arrow you are focused on. This was creating some confusion for controller only players
  • Removed the tutorial and controller screens from ever appearing, but you can still access these from the pause menu.
  • On a players first run they will jump right into playing as the Joker, them on their next run they will see the run settings and character select screen. The goal was just to streamline the process and get the player playing sooner.
  • Updated my logo on the main splash screen to be higher resolution
  • Hide the run timer, there is already enough time pressure during the run and this is just extra clutter
  • Run timer is still in the stats screen and game win/lose screen
• Bugs
  • Fixed a bug where the aliens teleoperation laser was not dealing melee damage to enemies
  • Fixed an text issue where the wrong text would appear for the laser map hazard
  • Adjusted the level up UI so it moving around the popup would properly work with controllers
  • Attempted to fix a bug where the level up screen would sometimes note work when using a controller or for some steam deck users.