Chess Kingdom update August 2026 (and new game announcement)

As always I'm a bit late, but here is everything that got changed since the last patch and my new game announcement!

Performance

• The stutter while you move pieces is gone. Two heavy jobs were running on the same thread that draws the board: the opening book was being rebuilt and copied twice per move pair, and every animation and move list update forced a full page layout. Across a typical match that added up to more than a second of freezing. On the same test match afterwards: long tasks went from 5 (1154ms total, worst 335ms) to zero, the worst frame from 341.8ms to 41.6ms, hitches over 100ms from 5 to zero, and average FPS from 90.4 to 115.0.

• The main menu no longer crawls after you finish a game. Background position analysis kept grinding away after the game had ended, so the post game screen and the main menu could fall to roughly 10 FPS, and sometimes 3 or 4, until you restarted.

• Faster launch on Steam Deck and SteamOS. Optional data loading was competing with startup on the Deck's slower CPU, and launch showed a white page for several seconds before the loading screen appeared.

• The download is smaller. A native library was shipping binaries for twelve platform and architecture combinations when only one of them is ever used. That is pruned, and 351 MB of music and piece art moved out of the compressed archive so a cold start no longer has to open it.

Saves, profiles and cloud

• Your profile can no longer reset itself or lose a session's progress. Three separate hazards were fixed: a late startup refresh could overwrite the active profile with defaults, a queued cloud write could save one profile under another slot's name, and a cloud copy with a newer timestamp could beat a copy that objectively contained more progress. A save that strictly dominates the other now wins, even if the regressed copy is newer.

• "Sync Now" no longer throws a Cloud Save error at PC players. That button belongs to the optional phone link, but it was showing for everyone and erroring when clicked by someone who had never linked a phone. It is now hidden unless you opt in, and Settings explains that Steam Cloud already handles your backup. (silverleaf1)

Learning

• New Coach mode. An optional coach marks your own pieces that can simply be taken, and while you are holding a piece it flags the squares that would hang it. That sits on top of the existing after the fact blunder guard. Both halves switch off above 1100 Elo, so rated play stays honest. (requested by PixelNomad36)

• Training has a Continue button that resumes your actual lesson. Every unlocked, unfinished chapter now shows Continue on the Learn hub and opens the first lesson you have not finished. Opening Principles at 7 of 15 used to reopen at lesson 1.

Lessons that taught the wrong move

This was the biggest single piece of work this month, and it started with one report about a bishop standing on a square it could not reach.

• Chapter 6, Advanced Tactics, now teaches the tactic it names. An audit of all 19 chapter 6 puzzles found positions that did not contain their own tactic, including a decoy puzzle where the answer was simply checkmate and a knight fork puzzle with nothing to fork. Overloading, Attraction, Desperado, Stalemate Tricks and The Windmill were rebuilt on verified positions in all 31 languages. (silverleaf1)

• Eleven more lessons that taught unsound moves are repaired. Chapter 1's King lesson claimed a square was unreachable when capturing the rook there was legal, Interference taught a knight move to d6 while mate was on the board, and nine others including Lucena, Two Rooks, Overloading and The Pin were rebuilt so the taught move genuinely wins.

• The Perpetual Check lesson no longer shows a winning position while telling you to take a draw. Its opening board had White a whole queen up under text about saving a lost game, and the next step promised a perpetual in a position with zero legal checks. Both boards were replaced and verified by exhaustive search. (silverleaf1)

• Twelve lesson diagrams showing impossible positions are fixed. The openings lesson had put a Ruy Lopez bishop on a dark square it could never occupy, with the wrong side to move. Diagram checking is now part of the build, which surfaced eleven more bad boards across chapters 1, 2 and 5, including adjacent kings and pieces hanging for no reason. (silverleaf1)

• Master Strategies lesson 2 matches its own explanation. The final exercise now asks for the move the lesson text recommends, the e pawn capturing the knight on f6, translated in every language.

• The Knight and Bishop movement quizzes no longer accept the wrong piece. Their curated positions were dead draws, so shuffling the king was marked correct. The positions were repaired so the intended capture genuinely wins.

Puzzles

• Puzzle ratings were inflating and are now recalibrated. A wrong move in practice never counted as a loss and a hint solve still paid full credit, so every puzzle gained rating forever. Under the old rules a true 1500 player reached 2575 after 100 puzzles and 5716 after 300. The first decisive attempt now settles the rating and retries stay free for learning. Existing inflated numbers converge back down over time instead of being slashed. (silverleaf1)

• Clicking Review Puzzles actually starts a review again. The due counter counted every scheduled puzzle, but the loader only searched a hardcoded set of files, so after a restart the due puzzles were unfindable, the click did nothing and the badge kept climbing. (silverleaf1)

• Puzzle modes unlock much earlier. Daily Puzzle now opens at level 3, Puzzle Practice at 5 and Puzzle Rush at 10, instead of all five puzzle modes sitting behind a flat level 20 wall that hid the learning loop for over ten hours.

• Puzzles are matched to your rating. Themed puzzle draws are now banded to your rating, so a novice is never served a 2200 fork. A new 400 to 799 bracket of 5,000 puzzles was added, and wrong answers in scenarios and daily training now register, which is what makes the adaptive targeting work at all.

• The Hint button shows you the whole move. It used to highlight only the piece for two seconds, which on some puzzles made every move by that piece look like the hinted one. It now highlights both squares, draws an arrow and prints the coordinates until you act.

• The puzzle screen fits inside a windowed game. It was building the full four column game layout, so the GAME panel hung off the left edge of the window and the puzzle card off the right, with the board squeezed into the middle.

Analysis, review and PGN

• "Missed mate in X" shows the whole mating sequence. The engine now records the full line during its search instead of reconstructing it afterwards, so forced mates run to the final move rather than stopping partway. (PixelNomad36)

• The post game best line is clickable and no longer cut short. Every move in the best line strip is a chip you can click to preview that position on the analysis board, and the line keeps 8 plies normally, or the entire sequence when a mate is involved, instead of stopping at four half moves. (PixelNomad36)

• Post game analysis shows real progress instead of looking frozen. The "Analyzing your game" pill ticks a live percentage, and opening the review mid run shows move N of M with a bar. It used to be a static message sitting there for up to a minute of engine work. (Uajsoki)

• One click Copy PGN, and exports tell you where the file went. Recent Games gained Review, Copy PGN and Export PGN actions, and exports now show the full saved path with an Open folder button.

• PGN exports of games you played as Black are no longer reversed. Saved games stored your colour in short form, which the exporter did not recognise, so both player names and ratings were written on the wrong sides and the result could be flipped.

Board, sound and collection

• Resuming a game as Black keeps the board the right way round. Every resume route was rebuilding the game without your colour, so Black games came back upside down. (Bob)

• Move sounds land with the move. Sound was fired only after the piece slide animation finished, so your own move arrived late and could bunch up with a fast AI reply. Stepping through analysis and move history is no longer silent either, and audio recovers after the game loses focus. (Bob)

• Double sounds, missing backgrounds and wrong variant boards. One report covered four shared state bugs: moves could play two sounds, an equipped background never appeared, Large Text was inconsistent, and Atomic and Kung Fu ignored your chosen board colours. Kung Fu's broken Play Again was fixed in the same pass.

• You can draw arrows and highlight squares during a live game. Right drag and right click annotations now work while the board is locked on the opponent's or the AI's turn, and the arrows themselves were redrawn as one clean shape instead of an oversized head sitting on a separate line.

• New "Show square names" option next to "Show piece labels" in the match panel. It labels every square, survives board flips, and is off by default. (PixelNomad36)

• New "Board texture" toggle in Display settings. The subtle diagonal stripes on the squares can be switched off. It applies live and saves per profile. (Bob)

• Five new piece sets on the unlock line. Ivory at level 14 is a hand painted ivory and ebony set, joined by Modern at 17, Tournament at 29, Terracotta at 41 and Minimal at 53, filling levels that previously awarded nothing. (PixelNomad36)

• The Collection screen shows what you are working towards. Locked rewards were dimmed so hard that seven different sets looked identical, and the NEW badge came back on every unlocked cosmetic at every launch because it was never saved, so 12 of 21 cards could be marked NEW at once. The four vector sets now carry a clear 2D label.

Controller, keyboard and Steam Deck[/h2>

• You can create a profile with a controller, no mouse required. Dialogs never trapped controller focus, so the D pad navigated the screen behind the welcome dialog instead of the dialog itself, and stick drift on handhelds could hide the mouse cursor permanently even with a mouse plugged in. Reported by retterSnape on a ROG Ally, who could not create a profile at all without attaching a mouse.

• The first screen is controller ready. A Deck or Steam Machine controller previously could not operate it at all.

• Controller users cannot click through a dialog by accident. The topmost dialog takes focus, B always picks a safe cancel or back action, long dialogs scroll internally, and board, undo and hint input can no longer leak through an overlay.

• You can play a full game with just the keyboard. Arrow keys and Enter drive the board cursor, arrows step through lesson sub steps instead of being swallowed, and arrow keys in analysis no longer flip the interface into controller mode.

Windows, layout and readable text

• Text is readable again, and the text size slider works. Some redesigned screens collapsed inherited labels to roughly 4 to 6px at common resolutions, and the saved UI scale preference was written to disk but never actually consumed by the scaling pipeline, so there was no working remedy. Both are fixed and the slider is back in Display settings.

• The window no longer opens with its bottom off the screen. On smaller or DPI scaled displays the window opened taller than the desktop work area, and its minimum height made it impossible to drag back into view. Size and minimum are both clamped to the screen now. (silverleaf1)

• The game reopens at the size you left it. Windowed size, position and maximized state are remembered between launches, with the position only reused if it still lands on a connected display. Fullscreen and mini mode never overwrite the remembered size. (PixelNomad36)

• The side panel no longer covers the board on smaller windows. In compact mode the layout squeezed its rows to fit while the board column could not shrink, so the panel rendered on top of the board's lower half at 1280x720 and below. (Professor_Taras)

• Buttons that were cut off or overlapping are back where they belong. START GAME sat below the fold on match setup at shorter window heights, and in Ukrainian the draw offer button collided with Resign because its label could not wrap. (silverleaf1)

• The main menu fits at every resolution without an inner scrollbar. First step and recommendation cards no longer both appear, and the cross promo strip switches to a compact banner at 1080p, 1366x768 and 1280x720.

• Training chapter cards line up. Chapter rows shrink wrapped to their own text, so every card ended at a different width. Both training views now share one container, so drilling from chapters into lessons does not jump. (PixelNomad36)

• Your first match no longer opens with two popups stacked on each other. The mini mode hint and the AI chat consent dialog fired 300ms apart over the board before you had moved a piece. The hint now waits, and steps aside if anything else is on screen.

League, rivals and your profile

• Profile Overview is now a proper player home. One dominant card gives you the single next step, either resume your game or your real next League fixture, with rivals, form and today's goals below it. Nothing was thrown away: the full old dashboard moved intact to a Stats tab.

• AI opponents can message you and challenge you to a rematch. Known opponents react to milestones you cross through the existing League phone, invite you to an ordinary rematch and can follow it with a League invitation. There is a dedicated toggle to switch outreach off, and cooldowns so it never becomes spam. Three unread messages pause new outreach.

• Opponent cards show your head to head record. Match Setup and opponent cards display lifetime wins, draws and losses against that opponent, and rematch actions name them directly.

• League divisions are ordered by strength again. Copper Gate is a genuine 400 to 620 beginner band rather than a mixed one, with several bots moved to the divisions their real strength belongs to. Existing saves re band themselves automatically between seasons.

• Rating classes match the standard bands. Advanced now runs 1400 to 1999 and Expert starts at 2000, fixed in both places the app defined them, so the Rating Journey and the rest of the game finally agree.

Smaller things

• The More Games shelf shows both studio titles. The carousel was nested inside returning player content, so a fresh or unsynced profile never saw it.

• The byline now reads By Pinch Games in all 31 languages, instead of presenting Chess Kingdom as its own publisher.

Support continues

Chess Kingdom is not being wound down. I still read every thread on this hub, and most of the list above exists because someone posted a screenshot or a puzzle ID here. That is not going to change. If something is broken, unclear, or just annoying, post it in the discussions and it goes on the list. Bug reports with a position, a puzzle ID or a screenshot are the fastest route to a fix. But that's not all i'm always open to add new stuff.

Something new!

My next game is Casino Legends. It is a premium offline casino game: five games on one floor, poker, blackjack, roulette, baccarat and slots, sharing one bankroll and one career. Fifty named regulars remember how you have treated them. You buy it once, there are no microtransactions, and no real money is ever involved, so you cannot lose any in it. The hook is the climb. You start as a nobody and the floor ends up knowing your name. It also now appears on the in game More Games shelf, in all 31 languages. Wishlist now: Casino Legends Trailer: View store page

For people who already own the bundle

Casino Legends is being added to the existing bundle: Chess, Checkers and Snake If you already own that bundle, Casino Legends comes with a substantial extra discount from day one. You do not need to do anything to get it.