New Character Overview Panel + What’s Next

I’ve been watching feedback and refunds and one thing is clear: a lot of people don’t fully understand what their stats actually do before they step into the arena. That’s on me.

So I’ve started improving the character creation screen and overall readability:

New: Character Overview Panel

• Shows your base hit chance based on DEX + your best melee skill

• Shows critical hit / critical failure chances

• Shows Heavy Damage and Light Damage ranges for your current Strength

• Shows your base Dodge / Parry / Block chances

The idea is: before committing to a build, you can quickly see “if I add 1 DEX or 1 point in Sword, how does that affect my actual chances?”

This doesn’t make the game easier – it just makes it clearer why you hit, miss, or get smashed.

What I’m working on next

Short-term goals for the next update:

• A better onboarding flow (premade starting character + clearer character creation)

• A small tutorial / first fight that explains movement, defenses and opportunity attacks

• Improved UI scaling for unusual resolutions (and preparing proper Steam Deck support)

• More QoL and bug fixes

I’m still a solo dev, but I want the game to communicate itself better, especially in the first 1–2 hours.

Reviews help a lot

If you’ve played Chains on Sand and enjoy this kind of brutal, tactical arena game, a short Steam review helps visibility more than you might think.

As always, you can post feedback in the discussions – I read everything.

Thanks for sticking with the project, – ThVaz