First Steam Launch
2026-01-27
Waves of Chess on Steam
Hello and happy January, I hope your year is off to a great start! We launched our very first Steam game Waves of Chess. It's been a very busy month but it's also been very inspiring to see how many people have played it and enjoyed it!
The game started as part of the Ludum Dare game jam #55 back in April 2024. The original jam idea was a collection of two different ideas. Smaller boards progressively getting larger, and cards that impacted both the board and the pieces. Allowing piece upgrades and fun effects.
The jam runs for 72 hours and I'm still surprised how much I was able to implement in that time. The bones of that build survived across two different rebuilds, but some of the design ideas didn't carry over. These ideas are in our back pocket for a potential update with a new mode; because they didn't feel essential to the core Waves of Chess identity.
We learned a lot from taking a jam idea to full release. And in releasing a Steam game, also a ton about how the Steam process works. The month before release definitely saw the most learnings (and crunchings) that will definitely come to use in our future releases.
We had very few expectations for the game but the small ones we did have were absolutely blown away by the support and reception. For a game with no marketing budget, and just word of mouth we are very pleased with the results!
We currently have two planned updates coming (v1.1 and v1.2), aimed at releasing across 2026. If you have any feedback feel free to leave it on the Steam discussions board.
For now we are shifting gears back into our second (and much bigger) game Faded Cove. It also got started during Ludum Dare 55 and has a target launch of Summer 2026. This will be available to wishlist soon!
Thank you to our family, friends, beta testers, and community at large for supporting our first release, we're really excited to keep going with future updates and of course, our next games!
- Joel
p.s.
Andddddd we may (or may not) have prototyped our third game since the Waves of Chess launch, but that isn't quite ready to share yet ;) It's another new rebuild of an old game of ours that never quite made it to Steam, but it's coming! - Sarah