We just pushed a new beta release to Chess Mess (version 0.8.3b) and it's live now for anyone in the Chess Mess beta. If you're interested in joining the beta, we've just extended the end date for entry. Read this post to learn more.
The Update
So what's new in this beta? We've got three major new features that are sure to improve your experience with the game!
Dark Mode
First, we've added a dark mode! This dark mode setting is independent of the theme that you've set.
This is a big deal as we've been asked for this by several folks. It will inherit your OS's preferred dark mode setting, too!
You can also enable/disable the Dark Mode setting from within the settings menu under Settings â Display â Dark Mode.
Daily Seeds
Then, we've introduced a long-planned feature: Daily Seeds! Once a day you can try your hand at a unique, fiendishly difficult seed.
Every day, the Daily Seed gets updated and it's the same for every player. You get one chance per seed to prove your skills.
And, soon, we'll introduce per-seed leaderboards where you can see your rank on today's seed as well as the top scores!
Steam Cloud
Finally, in this update, we've revamped how save games, and other persistent data are stored on disk. This has enabled us to synchronize specific data to the Steam Cloud!
So what's synced with the cloud? For now it's:
- Save game data
- Your recently played seeds
- Your most recently played difficulty level
We had to rethink the format of our persistent data and we've split most settings into a separate file so they're not synchronized to the cloud. We're considering adding your theme settings to the Steam Cloud data, but we'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Let us know over on Mastodon.
Stay Tuned
We're hard at work on Chess Mess, readying the game for release in the first quarter of 2025, but we're interested in your feedback.
If you have an issue with the game, you can file an issue on our GitHub page, you can also join our Discord, you can post on our Forum, or you can follow us on Mastodon.
