- Price Update - 26 August 2026
Hey everyone,I've dropped the price to $4.99. This isn't necessarily a reflection of the upcoming remake's quality.I'm pricing this game at a point where trying it out is a low-stakes decision for people.The previous pricing (including the jump to $19.99) came from inexperience. This is my first published title as a solo developer, and I made some calls early on I'd do differently now.The Godot remake is still actively in development and looking promising!For updates:TikTok (@ofcrownsandchains) — major development milestonesDiscord — daily/weekly minor updates, if you want to follow along more closelyThanks to everyone who's stuck around.
- Remake Progress Update - 19 August 2026
There's some progress to show for the remake.It's been a while since the last announcement. The tiles are essentially done for the first region (England and Wales), though the remake isn't playable yet, so nothing has shipped to the live build. And, the foundations of the new shader and planet-rendering pipeline have also been set.An in-engine screenshot of the new globe (full atmosphere, cloud layer, and dynamic sun lighting) and the new nation-level shader, built from scratch in Godot.What's doneEngland & Wales, fully hand-drawn at county and major-city level. Every border is a real triangulated mesh now. The old Unity version was limited to an index-map/texture approach, which meant borders showed visible texel stepping (low resolution borders) at any reasonable zoom. That constraint is gone entirely.A screenshot from the developer tile-definer application. Not an in-engine or gamepl…
- Remake In-Progress - 29 March 2026
I'm remaking the game from scratch in the Godot engine and I'll resume updates from there. A new discord server has also been set up (linked in the Steam page).The latest version of Of Crowns & Chains (Unity - Alpha 1.0.4.05) will remain accessible to all players as a legacy branch. When the Godot remake becomes playable, it'll override the Unity version as the public default branch. The remake may look different since this will be using a new engine and different approaches/mechanics/scope/design. However, the game will remain fundamentally the same. It'll start on January 1st, 1910, you select a country, and play from there.As usual, the remake (and future updates) will be free for all current and future owners of the game.I'm currently working on an Earth mesh with height-based vertex displacement for actual mountains and terrain, so I think the remake will look better. Here's a work…
- Alpha 1.0.4.05 - 22 January 2026
Changes:Another Graphical Overhaul to make the game look better (not too different from Alpha 1.0.3 - 8 direction, 8 pixel ray marching maintained for performance reasons).Naval Unit Spawning & Movement Fixed (Naval combat in-development).I'm publishing this update despite the changes being minor since I believe the visuals introduced by Alpha 1.0.4 were less appealing than Alpha 1.0.3 (now fixed).I can reimplement options for ray marching (Alpha 1.0.3's fade-in effects), but generally, the performance costs of per-frame ray marching are so high that the vast majority of players would set the variables to 8-direction, 8-pixel anyways.
- Alpha 1.0.4.04 - 28 December 2025
System Changes: Frontlines on allied territory against non-allied neighbors are now available for player/AI assignment. Allied nations will send units to help an allied nation (player or not) during wars.Adjacency check added to ensure nations do not steal occupation of tiles if they do not occupy a tile adjacent to the captured tile. Allies will claim occupation of tiles their units capture if they have at least one tile adjacent to it. Player units will follow the same logic to minimize exclaves.Combat simplified. Border clashes (when two units attack one another at the same time) have been removed since it's unnecessary. Combat is now attackers vs. defenders.Units now evenly distribute across frontlines. Previously, only one unit was sent to cover empty tiles and large stacks did not distribute themselves post-arrival to the front.Encircled AI divisions now more aggressively seek to…
- Alpha 1.0.4.03 (Minor Patch) & Mini-Announcement - 25 December 2025
Changes:Localized some UI Elements.Altered graphics (again) to make borders easier to distinguish.Bug Fixes:Fixed bug where nations were not being annexed properly.Fixed tile adjacencies (Some island parts of Europe deemed accessible by strait were not accessible).Mini-Announcement: Alpha 1.0.4 introduces a lot of game-breaking bugs, so I reverted the public default branch to Alpha 1.0.3. Alpha 1.0.4.03 can be accessed through the unstable branch.
- Alpha 1.0.4.02 - 24 December 2025
OptimizationsRay marching reduced to 8 directions (significantly higher FPS with minimal visual impact).System & UI ImprovementsQuality setting now only affects cloud detail.Nation borders are now easier to distinguish (graphical/shader changes).Units now properly distribute across tiles and use smooth transitions during & after movement (with satisfying position swapping for visual feedback).New resolution selector: Normal and Quad Resolution modes.Removed the old Tile Density options (preparing for upcoming historically-inspired administrative division overhaul).Gameplay & ControlsFrontline assignment/unassignment and attack-mode switching are now noticeably more accessible (still WIP – more polish coming).Bug FixesPopulation pyramid toggle fixed (Age Distribution button now works properly).Union Coat-of-Arms animation restored.Negative initial deployed unit stats corrected.Quality-of…
- Alpha 1.0.3 (Tile Density Modes, Optimizations, Bug Fixes, and QoL) - 25 October 2025
Optimizations: Merged Country Selection scene with Game scene (now it's much more seamless).Replaced Main Menu real-time rendering with a pre-rendered background video to decrease lag and battery life strain on laptop devices.General optimizations were made with how tiles are handled to decrease load times.Added Tile Density Modes: Low (~7,000 tiles, 8192x4096 tile index map; 4096x2048 terrain map and ocean map).Medium (~22,000 tiles, 8192x4096 tile index map, terrain map, and ocean map).High (~42,000 tiles, 16384x8192 tile index map, terrain map, and ocean map).The Low tile density mode does not use a 4096x2048 tile index map because that would make tiles too low-resolution (my budget laptop can run this mode at 720p resolution, so I don't think further downgrading is necessary). I can add another mode (Very Low) in the future.Bug Fixes: Fixed bugs that appeared after returning to main…
- Upcoming Alpha 1.0.3 Update - 23 October 2025
To address player feedback regarding the game's optimization issues, the upcoming Alpha 1.0.3 update on Friday (10/24/2025) will add three tile density modes:Low (7,000 tiles across Europe)Medium (22,000 tiles across Europe)High (42,000 tiles across Europe)As of Alpha 1.0.2, the game's Europe-only map has 42,000 tiles and uses a 16384x8192 tile index map. This is very computationally intensive and high-end hardware is required to play at this extreme level of tile density (more expensive rendering and pathfinding, more frequent tile updates, etc), hence why the minimum specification requirements are so high as of now.The lower tile density modes (Low and Medium) will offer higher performance for all systems and they will allow players who prefer larger tiles to play on the map that fits their preferences. All tile density modes are all planned to have the same states and provinces to en…
- Alpha 1.0.2 (Optimizations & QoL) - 18 October 2025
System(s) Changes: Added Unit Disbandment (Press G to delete all selected units and the soldiers will return to your nation's manpower - if the units have already taken casualties, it'll return those who are left alive).Standing Army is now tracked dynamically (casualties can be seen ticking the standing army statistic down).Optimization: Deferred Pathfinding Jobs to reduce stutters and lag during major wars. Previously, the Pathfinder was flushing all parallel pathfinding jobs every time a tile was captured, causing major stutters that made the game virtually unplayable.Now, every pathfinding job yields one frame.This is a temporary fix that slows the tick rate to prevent FPS stutters. A more permanent fix would be the replacement of the A* pathfinding algorithm with something faster.UI Fixes: The game's Aspect Ratio has been locked to 16:9 to prevent unintended UI scaling on monitors…
- Alpha 1.0.1 (Small Patch - Bug Fixes) - 16 October 2025
Bugs Fixed: Unit Teleportation Bug FixedMilitary Recruitment Bug FixedKnown Bug:Static Frontline Assignments Bug: Unit assignments to frontlines are not cleared when the player returns to the Main Menu and starts a new game as the exact same nation as they played the previous playthrough. These assignments cannot be overridden by player assignments, so this bug is problematic.This is a prevalent issue that I will fix by removing all uses of static variables (aside from the primary GameState) and switching to an object-oriented approach to fix these "Return to Menu" related bugs.Temporary Fixes for Frontline Assignments Bug: Play a different country each playthrough.Exit the application and open it again every playthrough to avoid bugs introduced by static variables not properly being destroyed.Open the console with the graves key, `, right below the Escape key. Type "country_ids" to see…
