We are adding today some extra content to Chessaria's Original Soundtrack. In addition to the 13 orchestral tracks available in the OST, you will find 18 exclusive mp3 recordings of Ben Rawles' interview on the creation of the game's original soundtrack.
Original Soundtrack available on Steam

- What are Ben's influences for creating the game's OST?
- What was his biggest challenge during the game's production?
- What is a typical workday for a professional composer?
- What are the different steps to create a memorable soundtrack?
He answers it all and more!

Let us know in the comments if you are interrested in transcription of the interview.

Hey everybody! In today's video we take a look at our top ten unity games for 2018... (Watch now)
https://youtu.be/pYeuHR-ZKx4

Hi everyone, we made a lot of updates to improve Chessaria since we launched the game earlier this year and today, we need your feedback! We have elaborated a short but important survey that shouldn' take your more than a few minutes and will help us know what you want!
► Share your thoughts[docs.google.com]

It's this time of the year again! The annual Steam Autumn Sale is live and the nominations for the Steam Awards are open! The esteemed committee that will nominate the work of your favorite developers is composed of those most qualified to judge... You!

We'd love to see you nominate our Team and their work on Chessaria! Also feel free to leave us a review: This means a lot to the whole team as they make a huge difference to us: to our morale, visibility and sales :)
► Nominate your favorite games
► Review & Support Chessaria[chessaria.com]



PS: and in addition to showing your love & support, you'll get a new badge from Steam!

We just pushed a new version of Chessaria (v1.09 for Mac/Pc) with fixes based on the feedback you sent us, either by email, on the Hub or on Discord.

- Castling bug is now fixed: Castling will no longer block the game in the solo campagne.
- Castling was enabled for more levels from the campaign.
- Levels' layout tweeked (mostly for region 4 and 5)
- Turn count & Timers fixed for all levels
- Simplified Chinese is back
- The "Ghost" units & obstacles bug should be fixed.
- Link to "support the game" was added to the main menu.
- Text the restart the quick games updated
- The bug that triggered Dialogs after playing specific Adventure level was fixed.
- Bugs that caused the game to crash were corrected
- Typos corrected

We opened a new thread to let you share with the us the levels you believe are too difficult: This will help us spot problematic levels and balance the ones that need to be tweaked.

Special thanks to @あいりす♪, @Kinglink, @Warfair and the others who took the time to feed us with bug reports: This helps us correct the problems and make Chessaria better!

You can share your suggestions for the next update in the Suggestion Hub and discuss them on Discord[discord.gg].

Thanks for your support!
The Chessaria Team

We’re celebrating #loveindies this week!
The #loveindies Week is a community campaign, celebrating indie developers and their communities.
Show your love for your favorite indie games by taking a moment to REVIEW them on Steam and RECOMMEND them on Twitter.

To celebrate the event, we are organizing a giveaway every day of this week.
Simply Follow us on Twitter to join the event and share your love for indie games!

You might not know how much a simple review means to an indie team like ours. They make a huge difference to us: to our morale, visibility and sales.

Meet Enrique Sánchez Acosta, the Ph.D. computer scientist, R&D software engineer and computer chess programmer behind Chessaria’s Artificial Intelligence.

In this interview Enrique discusses the challenge of creating a mission-based chess engine for the needs of Chessaria.


Hi, I started to develop chess engines around 1998. Since then I have made several engines for different platforms (Windows, Linux, Android). Between 2000 and 2002 I published several chess video games while I was working in other video games companies developing football video games.
I am an amateur player and started playing chess at university and I still play in some competitions whenever I can.

The chess engine developed for Chessaria is something completely different from what is developed today. Of course, the base is very similar to other chess programs, but the engine’s goal is to be a strategy engine for turn-based battles, where thanks to a new communication protocol between the interface and the engine, different rules can be assigned to the engine. Those new rules are completely different from the rules used in classical chess and other kinds of chess variants that exist today. For example, there is no limit on the number of pieces you can play and you can even play without kings. The game engine supports new kind of pieces like holes, walls, collectibles and new rules for the pieces’ movements, etc. In addition to missions that have nothing to do with the rules of a game of chess but rather with a battle between two sides. Everything is possible in the new engine, which drastically increases its complexity, but allows the creation of new scenarios never seen until today on a chessboard.

The biggest challenge I faced when it came to create the engine was not to create the logic for the new pieces or the new rules, but creating the missions that the A.I. has to complete.
The engine needed to be able to support different type of missions to win the game, which were not the typical checkmate. It included capturing a series of pieces or securing a series of positions, and not only that, but they can be mixed in an asymmetrical way. So, the A.I. must not only complete its mission but also has to be aware of the opponent’s mission and prevent him from completing it. You may be playing to capture a square with a piece and the other side to kill a series of pieces and win with it. This greatly complicates the A.I. of any chess engine, but after much joint effort by the entire Chessaria development team, spectacular results have been achieved and the Chessaria engine has become a new approach to strategy games with great possibilities of expansion.

When the Pixel Wizards team contacted me, I thought they just wanted a version of a chess engine, but when they started telling me everything they had in mind, it seemed like such an interesting and novel idea that I could not pass up the opportunity to work with them, I had to be there! It was a great challenge.
Now I am grateful to be part of this project that has allowed me to create a new chess engine much more versatile and adaptable for many more approaches.

The engine can use up to 16 CPUs at the same time (at least for the moment) which increases the calculation power of the engine. However most users playing against the engine don’t require the use of so much power, since a single CPU produces enough computing power to defeat 90% of human chess players from all over the world.

The engine uses all the latest knowledge acquired during years of development of other chess engines, so its level is very high. Chessaria’s engine can beat the vast majority of chess players so it was necessary for the team to find an algorithm capable of adapting the game’s capacity to the different levels of players. The engine can be configured to play based on 16 different levels of difficulty to adapt to the ELO of each player. The design team made sure the game would adapt to the player’s learning curve as he progresses in the adventure.

ELO is a classification of force used to classify chess players. An amateur player usually starts playing well with 1400 ELO and a master with 2300. The great masters and professionals have more than 2700 ELO. The Chessaria engine can play at the level of the great masters, approximately 2800 ELO or more.

Chessaria AICE could be a good training engine! I believe a GM would be able to put a chess engine like Chessaria’s in a tight spot as he would know how to find specific positions that require a lot of computing which would tip the balance in his favor. Only a few of the best engines in the world can play face to face against the greatest GMs. Chessaria AICE can win against many of them but defeating the world champions isn’t an easy task!

Artificial intelligence algorithms like chess programs are called "zero-sum games": The number of points is the same on both sides of the board so a side wins points because the other side loses points. Therefore, the rules of the game are generally the same for both sides.

However, when you integrate asymmetrical and different type of missions, the evaluation system has to change completely. Designing an engine that can support missions so different from one level to the other, was without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges we faced!

We had to create a series of equivalence so that the evaluation of a side was equivalent to the opposite side. The objective being to be able to compare the two sides of the board by making sure the zero-sum’s algorithms were still valid as without proper equivalence in the evaluation, points can’t be added or subtracted, since their value would be different.

This could be compared to playing football were one side wins by scoring 3 goals while the other side wins by being in possession of the ball for 30 minutes. The side that tries to score 3 goals can’t just evaluate the situation based on the number of goals scored, but must also take into account the time the other team has been in possession of the ball even if it isn’t it’s mission. The other team, has to stop goals from being scored without losing sight of their objective of keeping the ball for as long as possible.

The situation is similar with asymmetrical chess missions: All the rules introduced in the game must be taken into account in order to establish a strategy and decide if it is better to opt for a defense or an attack depending on the position and the missions assigned to each team.

Alfil is a chess engine I started working on a few years ago that was commercialized for the first time in 2000. I stopped developing it in 2013, mainly due to lack of time I could devote to it. With an ELO of 2740, it was listed among the 30 best chess engines in the world, and competed in different online tournaments.

A few years ago I decided to make a new chess engine based on knowledge acquired during the creation of Alfil and the most advanced chess engines. This new engine was written in C# and follows the basic rules of chess.

With Chessaria AICE, I had to turn things around completely to be able to support the unique features that the game requires while keeping it compatible with predefined tournament protocols (UCI). Chessaria AICE differs completely, both from the C++ and the new C# version of Alfil. The large number of new rules introduced to support Chessaria’s gameplay makes it the most versatile and powerful chess engine I have created.

The first chess programs of the last century already used pruning algorithms such as alpha-beta or minimax to optimize search and in depth evaluation, without the need of analyzing all possibilities. Nowadays, there aren't any secret algorithms to write a chess engine as “almost” all the research has been published, no matter how innovative they may be. Some of the most important ones that have contributed to the power of today’s most advanced engines are public.

Here are three technical examples:
- Bitboards and hash tables (thanks to Albert Lindsey Zobrist who invented the Zobrist Hashing) that allows thanks to the XOR operation that two 64-bit numbers can be operated to form another one and eliminated by recovering the previous one. It's great for storing 64-cell boards and being able to operate with them.

A XOR B = C
C XOR A = B

This means that we can move parts by operating the numbers, which is enormously fast for computers, and also storable together with their evaluation in the hash tables.

- Another great advance is multi-processors evaluation.

- End tables which are archives of evaluated positions. Usually end positions with only a few pieces, even though some programs use tables of up to 7 pieces. These are mostly useful in classic chess situation but tend to occupy a lot of space and are unadapted to the nature of Chessaria’s gameplay.

- The use of neural networks in programs like AlphaZero, for the evaluation of positions, is also currently being investigated. So far expert rules from GMs are used to evaluate a position. Values ​​were put to the pieces and the advantages in each position. Neural networks evaluate millions of positions to determine the rules by themselves, without the need of chess experts and capable of achieving surprising results!

The development of a chess program is very complex and takes a tremendous amount of time to develop, but it’s exciting!

The most important thing is to take the time to learn before starting to write: How chess programs work, what parts they have in common, etc. It is also very important to use a common communications protocol as UCI to be able to compete against other engines and see the progress you make during the development of your engine.

I recommend to start by reading Tom Kerrigan's blog[www.tckerrigan.com] which contains many examples and explains step by step how to create a simple chess program.

Another interesting read is Chess Programming Wiki[chessprogramming.wikispaces.com] that will help you apprehend from the simplest to the most complex elements of chess programming.

Also, remember to always structure your project in blocks, from the most general to the most specific elements.

We announced last week the release of Chessaria on Mac and we wanted to share details on this update and answer the questions you might have!

If you want to play Chessaria in the best possible conditions, you’ll need a recent machine.

To check your Mac model and when it was released, select About This Mac from the Apple Menu on your menu bar. The game supports the following Macs:

- All 13” Retina MacBook Pros released since 2016
- All 15” Retina MacBook Pros released since Mid 2012
- All 15" Macbook Pros released since Mid 2012 with a 1GB graphics card or better
- All 21.5” iMacs released since Late 2013 with a 1.8GHz i3 processor or better
- All 27” iMacs released since Late 2013
- All 27" iMac Pros
- All Mac Pros released since Late 2013

Some older Macs are capable of running the game but they don’t consistently meet the standards required for the best experience. Don’t try to play Chessaria on a 2008 Macbook Pro. We tried that already ;)

We recommend at least one of the following graphic cards or something more recent:
- VIDEO (ATI): AMD FirePro D300
- VIDEO (NVIDIA): NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M
- VIDEO (INTEL): Intel Iris Graphics 540

Once again, we played the game with older cards and it worked ok but you won’t be enjoying the game in the best conditions.

We launched the game on OS X Mountain Lion so chances are you are good to go with your present OS! Most of our tests are made on macOS High Sierra so we recommend playing the game on it if you can.

If you don’t mind lower FPS, here are a few tips that will make the game run faster.
- Set the “resolution” to something lower, this will greatly increase the FPS.
- Lower the Graphics quality to “Low” and activate the “Post-process”: this is the best graphics/performance compromise.
- Close “Google Chrome” to win precious FPS!
- Deactivate Steam Overlay. Open the Steam client and navigate to the Steam > Settings/Preferences > In-game tab. Un-check the box next to Disable the Steam Overlay while in-game.

You won’t see a big difference between the Mac and Pc versions of Chessaria. The options are identical and you’ll be able to play the same Adventure, Quick Games and Online Multiplayer. The changes you might notice are related to Shaders, Visual Effects and Post Process

Yes, Chessaria supports cross platform online multiplayer.
This was a really important point for us and we are happy to confirm you can play against a friend online on Steam whatever OS they have: PC vs PC // PC vs MAC // MAC vs MAC

PC and MAC render graphics through different technologie: DirectX on PC, Metal on recent Macs, OpenGL on older Macs. This difference of technology makes rendering 3D graphics on multiple platforms a real challenge.

As the version of the engine we developed Chessaria on doesn't support Metal, we had to upgrade the project to make it compatible with a new version of the engine. We also had to bake new lights for the levels and make changes to the Post-Process. Finally, many Visual Effects were updated or replaced to avoid glitches that only appeared on Mac.

We made a few corrections this weekend following extra tests so if you couldn’t install the game, this issue was identified & corrected this morning.


We hope you'll enjoy playing the game on your Mac!
Feel free to ask us your questions about this update either here or on Discord[discord.gg] and thanks for your support!

The Chessaria Team

We annouced yesterday the release of a new game mode that give access to the Master rank. Here are details on this new challenge!

This game mode consists of 25 new levels in addition to the 100 levels of the campaign. The levels are tougher, the A.I. is stronger and some of the pieces have been replaced (ex: Bishops for Queens) for a greater challenge!

This new game mode is now available to all Pc/Mac players since update v1.08.
Anyone that completes the campaign with at least the rank "Fair" can unlock it. Once that's the case, you will see an Orc symbol on the Main Menu and all the new challenges will be unlocked and playable. These new levels appear as pulsating red levels in the different maps of the Adventure Mode and can be played either in normal or in hardcore.

You unlock the rank fair when you complete a mission. You unlock the ranks Good and Perfect when you manage to complete a level with a good game that depends on the number of Moves & Units lost in a level.

The Hardcore game mode consists of only on rank: Master, which you unlock by completing an hardcore level with success. There arn't any specific number of Moves or Units to keep alive to unlock the rank as the challenge is to complete a these levels.

The A.I. is set much higher in the Hardcore game mode. It has more time to compute but we left in place the one core cpu dedicated to computing as removing this would result in unbalancing the game too much between High performance computers and older machines

Chessaria is a game playable by experienced chess players as well as gamers new to the game of Chess. You will not become a GM by playing Chessaria but we believe its a fun and interresting way to introduce the game of Chess to people that might be intimidated by it or pushed away by the graphics and static animations of the board game. The Adventure is a good way to introduce the rules and its pieces while making the challenges stronger as you progress in the game. Still we had to balance it in a way that makes the whole game fun to play and fair.

This new game mode allows us to set the level of challenge much higher without making the game unbeatable for players with an Elo score under 2800. We also wanted to make some of the levels we love harder as you might not have been prepared for a high level of challenge the first time you played them.


We hope you'll enjoy this new challenge!
Good luck and let us know how you're doing either here or on Discord[discord.gg]!

Thanks for your support!
The Chessaria Team

We are back today with a BIG update in this version v1.08 of Chessaria. Mac as well as PC users are going to like this!

- MAJOR IMPROVEMENT: The game is now available for Mac users (and this was a challenge on its own!)
- MAJOR IMPROVEMENT: New Hardcore game mode added to the game: A real challenge for the best strategists out there! This game mode is unlockable when the Campaign is completed at least once (details here)
- 2 new quickgames added to the game: Thanos Chess & Regicide (new levels will be added regularly).
- Chinese language added to the game.

Special thanks to Reddit, @Ebinola and @EnergyDrink for your suggestions!

You can share your suggestions for the next update in the Suggestion Hub and discuss them on Discord[discord.gg].

Thanks for your support!
The Chessaria Team