Sente is arriving sooner than you’d think. The simultaneous turn-based board launches on August 11, 2026. Thank you so much for the support so far that has made Sente’s launch possible, we’d like to thank all the demo and playtesters participants for joining the conversion on Discord to feedback and help make Sente even better.
Check out the release date trailer below:
Onto our regularly scheduled Dev Log! As many of you know, Sente is playable for up to 6 players at one time. Five opponents may seem intense to someone just starting their Sente journey but the devs are here to answer any prevalent questions.
The devs had been designing early concepts of Sente since 1996. Inspired by the movements of Rooks and Bishops from chess, this paved way for the movements of the tokens in Sente across a hexagonal grid.
Back in the 80s, classic Dungeons & Dragons also featured hexagonal maps, these tiled depictions proved how fitting together multiple hexagons worked much better than other shapes.
Sente’s gameplay changes drastically when going up from two to three players, altering from a Zero-Sum game to a non Zero-Sum game.
When playtesting Sente, the team have often found that in games featuring 3 or more players, alliances get made. Players team up to take down the more impressive grid or one player becomes passive and allows the others to battle it out.
Trying to anticipate multiple opponents' grids when all players move at the same time is a level of difficulty unique to Sente that you wouldn’t get in a sequential turn game.
While in one on one combat, both players have the same amount of influence on the board as each other, once you add subsequent opponents, your actions affect smaller and smaller aspects of the board within the grand scheme. However, even the smallest change could leave drastic impacts due to the chain reaction system.
In a two player round, it pays to be aggressive, in three players it’s more tactical to outmanoeuvre before fighting, and with six players the main goal is simply survival!
Six opponents felt like the sweet spot of strategy and chaos, however, it is entirely possible that more players could have been included for added explosive fun.
Developer Fernando has been hard at work making sure the balancing for so many players remains consistent and fun for all involved. The main way of balancing turns has been a strict round countdown to ensure players don’t take too long making a decision. Taking too long to make a move results in a “flag” and your turn is skipped, get flagged three times and you’re eliminated from the game.
Also, the more players moving pieces on the board increases the chances of players moving to the same tile or a piece moved in two different directions at the same time. Fernando has found a rather elegant solution to solve this conundrum; the piece explodes.
We look forward to seeing you all on August 11 when Sente launches on Steam! In the meantime, join the Sente Discord and find your next Sente rival.