Posted November 23, 2025 by posshydra
hi! its austin. has it been two weeks already? oh...
a friend shared with me a video by mantron, where they give a nice overview of some games and demos from the last steam nextfest. checkmage was included!!! it was so crazy to see somebody review my game with such glowing positivity...
you can watch the video here. please give them some appreciation, the transitions and editing on the videos are top notch.
one thing that stood out to me in the video were the clips that were recorded with the pixel-perfect setting enabled. i appreciate it when people play with the settings and tweak things to their liking, but i did realize that all the subtle scaling and tweening caused some peculiar visual artifacts in the pixel-perfect mode.
i decided to give the pixel-perfect mode its own set of animations with reduced texture stretching and rotation on cards and pieces.
another big leap in progress, i finally implemented commanders.
the player gets to choose their own initial king setup, similar to the other students in the world. i dont plan to give the player any of the enemy's initial setups, but i will give a handful of unlockable unique ones to keep things interesting and to make the player feel special :) . this is all for the sake of the sandbox-esque customization theme of the game, allowing the player to have their own preferred play style.
so far they feel pretty good to play with! some of them are stronger than others, but i feel free from the annoying stress of "balance" when i just plan around what's fun rather than what's fair.
more progress made on the stages, just fleshing them out enough to justify their existence with fun interactions and personality. what if there were a stage where you could paint all over it? somebody on bluesky suggested i make a puzzle with these, which im considering might be fun
and as always, development driven by intrusive "what-if" thoughts... this piece shifts between 3 movement/capture types every time it's moved, one of the gimmicks/techniques that the alchemist Reed employs. pretty soon i'll have no more ideas for chess pieces, right?
Checkmage! is still in active development. If you want to support me, please consider sharing with friends. The game will be released on Steam and Itch for sale when I'm done making it.
Checkmage! on Steam - play the demo now!
Bluesky - more updates, videos and sneak peeks