Chess Kingdom · published · build 22908333
I'm officially announcing Checkers Kingdom! And good news for everyone here: Chess Kingdom players will get a discount when it releases.
Don't you worry though: 1.0 still comes first. I'm only announcing Checkers Kingdom now because Steam kind of demands you gather wishlists for at least a while before you launch. Consider this the heads-up; all my focus stays on finishing Chess Kingdom 1.0.
Before we get to the patch, a quick note: I'll be increasing the 1.0 price a little bit, right before 1.0 comes out. So not yet, but that does mean right now is the most affordable Chess Kingdom will ever be.
1.0 is packing tons of new content: more countries, more AI opponents, two new game modes, and a whole UI overhaul. That alone is a reason for a small bump.
But more importantly: on Steam, you sell more than 90% of your units on sale. That's just the reality of the platform. So I have to increase the price a little to make sure I actually make at least a little money from the game.
Small jump, not a huge one. Just enough to make the math work.
So if you've been thinking about grabbing a copy for a friend, or picking it up yourself: now's the time. Early Access pricing sticks around until 1.0. And Now: The Patch
As always, keep the feedback coming and I'll keep updating!
April 22, 2026
New: Grandmaster Opening Book
The AI now plays from a real tournament book built from 25,822 grandmaster games (2500+ Elo, 18 months of master play).
12,407 book positions / 28,041 move entries, 12.8× larger than the previous hand-curated book
Natural depth scaling by difficulty: beginners see 1–4 ply, master/legend see up to 30 plies of prep
First-move variety now matches real GM practice. e4, d4, Nf3 and c4 all appear in realistic proportions (no more knight-opening every game)
Opening pools also rewritten and ~10× larger:
Casual: e4 / d4 / Nf3 / c4 all at ~25%, ~245 lines total
Normal & Hard: e4 / d4 / Nf3 split evenly, 320+ and 240 lines
Master: e4 / d4 only, 50/50, matching real GM practice
New: Country — Austria
12 new pieces in light & dark variants:
King: Habsburg Emperor · Queen: Empress Sisi
Bishop: Archbishop · Knight: Lipizzaner
Rook: Schönbrunn Palace · Pawn: Imperial Guard
Austrian flag wired up across profile, league, tournament, and online play.
New: Save Versioning & Migration
Saves are now versioned so future updates can safely change the save format:
Automatic pre-migration backups (last 5 kept per slot)
Forward-compat. Newer-version saves load with a warning instead of crashing
Improved: Controller Support
Controller support was not perfect after the UI update, now it's back to the standard you can expect.
Bug Fixes
AI no longer favors Nf3 / knight-first openings. Root-caused in both the opening-pools selector and the book-probe path
Multiple additional bug fixes across menus, gameplay and AI behavior
General stability and performance improvements
Under the Hood
1001/1001 automated tests passing, with 44 new ones added for this patch
New engine validation harness to catch AI regressions before they ship
Master opening book sourced from 18 months of top-level tournament play
Heads up: this patch has a lot of AI changes. If anything feels off, report it and I'll keep tuning. That's what Early Access is for!
Thank you all so much for playing. I hope you'll love Checkers Kingdom just as much as Chess Kingdom.
See you on the board.