We’re very excited to announce the completion of the Level Editor work. As part of our overall feature timeline, this is a big step. It brings us one step closer to the Early Access launch. We’ve had 3 main features to establish before we could launch EA: Level Editor, Multiplayer Mode, and unlocking the Campaign open-world after the events of the Demo. With Level Editor done, we just have two remaining, and we’re moving more quickly these days!
Level Editor
For those of you that have been with us for while, you know all these features have been available in an early state on the old website chesslike.net. For the desktop game, we’ve been focused on polishing the Level Editor experience for players into a more intuitive experience. The player doesn’t need to know anything about the inner workings of how we lay art and logic layers in the map for example.
Along with UI improvements, we’ve implemented what we call “Mario-Maker-Style Publishing”and level validation. You can make a level any way you want, but you have to be able to beat it in order to release it for the public to play. Every level published by any player will be available for other players in Freeplay mode. Authors will be able to update levels and republish them after beating them again. We’re really looking forward to seeing what players create!
The levels will have liking, reporting, and sharing! One of the most amazing things that happened back when we were on the open web, we had some really special educational purpose use cases. For example, a teacher who is creating levels for their class, and having a shareable link for their students to easily access the levels and work through small logic puzzles as a fun and mentally-healthy exercise in class. We’re especially excited to share that for players who own the game, they will be able to share any level from Freeplay Mode with a publicly playable link that is live on the open web.
You can see an example of that here. Play Now: https://chesslike.net/play/8PKTFY
Multiplayer
We have had a basic multi-player mode working before with our own lobby servers. Our next steps toward EA are to reestablish this mode, but with the Steam accounts and Steam Lobbies. We’ll be fully integrated with Steam functionality so you can invite your friends, etc. We’re also planning to allow players to create levels in the Level Editor for the specific use in Multiplayer Mode. We know the community will create great PvP levels like the legendary Big Game Hunters from Starcraft. Again, we’re moving faster these days, so this will come online quickly. Watch this space for updates!
Campaign
If you’ve played all the way through the Demo, you’ll know that the story ends in a way that you can’t return to the town or world. You can only replay the last level, or restart the campaign fully. While we’re not planning to include Chapter 2 in the launch of Early Access, we do want to allow the player back into the world after saving the progress from the campaign that is available in the Demo. Players will be able to explore the town and world to find any secrets they missed during initial playthroughs, and get hints about what’s to come in Chapter 2 in Greenwich.
Bugs
We also want to acknowledge the bugs in the Demo. We’ve spent a considerable effort on improving the tracking and error reporting within the game, including the Demo. We know some players have experienced bugs doing some things in the open world that we didn’t anticipate. We’ve continued to take these error reports, and investigate and fix every single one. Any players who are facing those errors recently in the Demo have been invaluable to us in fixing these bugs for everyone else. If that sounds like you, please check again in a few days, there will likely be an update fixing the problems you were facing, and we sincerely appreciate you playing the game.