Rookspell — Major Update
New spell cards
Arcane Draft — Epic: Choose any built-in spell you have discovered and add it to your hand.
Echo Sigil — Rare: Return your most recently played Common, Uncommon, or Rare spell to your hand. Cannot recover itself.
Quarry Mark — Uncommon: Mark an enemy non-king piece for the turn. Capture it with your next move to draw an additional spell.
Transmutation — Uncommon: Discard another spell and draw one exactly one rarity higher. Legendary spells become a different Legendary.
Claim Jumper — Epic: Before your next turn, steal the first capture reward your opponent earns. The ward is visible.
Sidewind — Common: A chosen pawn may move diagonally forward into an empty square this turn, but cannot promote with that move.
Masquerade — Rare: A bishop temporarily moves like a knight, or a knight like a bishop, for one move.
Runic Mine — Rare: Mark an empty square. The first enemy non-king piece to land there is petrified through its following turn.
Clockwork Square — Epic: Rotate everything inside a king-free 2×2 area clockwise, including empty squares. Cannot expose your king.
Royal Recall — Rare: Relocate a bishop, knight, or rook beside your king. It remains locked for the current turn and your entire next turn.
Mistaken Identity — Legendary: Mark a non-pawn, non-king piece as a false king for one round. A checked false king must escape; false checkmate ends the spell rather than the match. If its escape exposes the real king, the king must move immediately.
Progression and collection
Added the Spellbook, allowing players to construct an 8–12-card capture-reward pool for offline matches.
Added a guaranteed-new-card system: after four capture rewards without an unseen card, the next eligible reward is guaranteed to be new.
Added “New Discovery” celebrations and badges.
Added persistent card play and draw statistics.
Added Collection filters for discovered cards, missing cards, rarity, and text search.
Added card usage totals to Collection details.
Improved Collection controller navigation and enlarged card inspection.
Updated collection and rarity achievements for the expanded 41-card pool.
Balance changes
Standard draw odds are now tier-based: 50% Common, 30% Uncommon, 12.5% Rare, 5% Epic, and 2.5% Legendary.
Adding more cards to a rarity no longer changes that rarity’s overall draw chance.
Arcane mode now uses a flatter rarity curve, making Epic and Legendary cards considerably more common.
Gambit is now Uncommon; Reinforcements is Rare.
Bulwark is now Uncommon; Fortify is Rare.
Veil is now Uncommon; Feint is Rare.
Field Mend is now Epic; Resurrection is Legendary.
Time Bank and Tempo now scale with the match’s starting clock, preventing oversized swings in very short or long games.
Updated card descriptions to accurately state targets, areas, restrictions, and effect durations.
Tutorial and accessibility
Rebuilt the first-run tutorial around a guided onboarding flow.
New players are asked whether they already understand chess.
Beginners receive interactive lessons covering movement, captures, promotion, castling, check, and checkmate.
Experienced chess players can skip directly to the Rookspell guide.
Added an interactive Rookspell turn teaching capture, draw, card view, inspection, casting, targeting, and altered movement.
Both tutorial tracks can be replayed through How to Play.
Tutorial prompts automatically switch between keyboard/mouse and controller instructions.
Newcomers begin with an easier AI and untimed defaults.
Added UI and text scaling options from 85% to 150%.
Added Full, Reduced, and Off animation settings.
Settings are now scrollable and accessible during a match.
Audio
Added an original procedural ambient music loop.
Added sound effects for movement, captures, castling, checks, clock warnings, card draws, spell casting, game endings, and UI navigation.
Added unique cues for Runic Mine, Clockwork Square, Royal Recall, and Mistaken Identity.
Added separate Master, Sound Effects, and Music volume controls.
Added a global mute option.
Audio settings now persist between sessions.
Controller improvements
Added Auto, On, and Off controller modes.
Auto mode follows the player’s most recent intentional input.
Added adaptive controller prompts throughout gameplay and tutorials.
Improved board cursor movement, card selection, card-view switching, and target selection.
Added reliable controller navigation across menus, Settings, Collection, Spellbook, Workshop, tutorials, history, and pause screens.
Added focus trapping and restoration for modal screens.
Improved support for multiple connected controllers by following the last-used device.
Added stick-drift filtering.
Controller prompts now return to keyboard/mouse after intentional mouse or keyboard input.
Disconnecting a controller safely removes controller prompts and cursor state.
Controller Off now immediately disables and hides the in-game virtual cursor.
Card and gameplay fixes
Disabled cards are now dimmed while remaining inspectable.
Unavailable cards now explain why they cannot be played.
Card playability is rechecked when clicked, preventing stale or illegal casts after a turn changes.
Fixed overlapping cards becoming permanently stuck in their hovered position.
Added visible played-card piles and a chronological card-history viewer.
Opponent card history remains hidden where appropriate.
Prevented clicks from passing through pause menus, card choosers, and other overlays.
Fixed temporary shields, freezes, mines, and spell markers becoming detached when pieces move, swap, rotate, or are captured.
Fixed Bulwark and Fortify protection during en passant.
Fixed petrified or fire-blocked rooks being used for castling.
Fixed Royal Decree’s extended king movement being incorrectly treated as castling.
Added proper insufficient-material, 50-move-rule, and threefold-repetition draws.
Improved AI understanding of fire, slime, freezes, shields, and new movement effects.
Smoke and hidden-information fixes
Smoke now correctly hides every piece inside its 3×3 area from non-casters.
The caster continues to see through their own smoke.
Hidden captures no longer reveal themselves through an immediate card reward.
The solo AI now plans from the information it is allowed to see.
AI moves selected under Smoke are validated against the real board before being played.
All pieces reliably reappear when the smoke disperses.
Online and stability fixes
Added strict validation for online moves, targets, spell choices, board coordinates, and turn ownership.
Added protocol-version checks to reject incompatible peers.
Stale move and card packets from before a restart or rematch are now rejected.
New spell targets and card choices are synchronized and validated.
Online capture rewards remain deterministic between peers.
Local Spellbooks are disabled online to preserve synchronization.
Improved lobby invitation handling, including invitations received during a match.
Achievement progress now reconciles safely between offline saves and Steam.
Hardened settings and progression loading against malformed or outdated save values.
The game remains safe to launch when Steam or GodotSteam is unavailable.
Card art overhaul
Rebuilt all 41 card illustrations in a consistent pixel-art style.
Standardized every card icon to the native 30×16 card window.
Added unique effect-specific artwork for every spell.
Improved silhouettes, contrast, transparent margins, and readability at actual gameplay size.
Fixed artwork being squeezed into a narrow portion of the card.
Fixed card-frame layering so rounded window edges properly mask the artwork.
Updated Workshop guidance for correctly sized custom card art.
Quality assurance
Expanded automated coverage for chess rules, every spell interaction, online validation, controller behavior, progression, audio, tutorials, Workshop cards, and card artwork.
Final regression result: 15/15 test suites passed, with 776 checks passed and 0 failed.