We have 10 new achievements for you to earn! If you've been playing over the past week, you might have earned some of these achievements yourself already!
As long as you have an account, you can now earn achievements, and you can check what achievements you have earned in your profile. Personally, I am a huge fan of the work by Alcoth on all the icons for this first batch of achievements!
Progression of achievement styles
We went through a few different concept styles before landing on our final stone tile look. Alcoth started with some immediately awesome line drawings of different achievements and what they could look like. However, it took us a little while to land on a look for the final icons.
I loved Alcoth's initial wooden tile look, but unfortunately those icons didn't work well for display at lower sizes in a grid. We then tried a flatter look, but both Alcoth and I felt this modern look didn't quite fit one of the world's oldest board games.
After this misstep, Alcoth came up with our final look for the achievements, stone tiles. This hit everything we needed, fitting well in our UI as well as fitting our theme. Some refinement later and we had our final achievement icons!
The achievements
When adding achievements we aim to reward uncommon feats, exploration and trying new things, and difficult challenges.
For example, our ultimate challenge is beating the Panda bot. Players have set a goal of accomplishing this ever since we released the Panda. And now I am happy that we can finally reward players who overcome that challenge by granting an achievement for beating them!
This first batch of achievements includes beating the Panda bot, and also three other achievements for beating the other difficulty levels. Our rarest achievement, Clean Sweep, then rewards players for beating all four of our bots. Currently, only 3.6% of players have earned this achievement.
This first release also includes Jack of Ur Trades and Review-Ur, aiming to encourage exploration around our site. And the final three achievements, Crowded, Full Deploy, and No Murcy, reward players for uncommon positions in games. Crowded is our most earned achievement so far, with 76% of players having earned it as of writing!
jfrm was first to earn all 10 achievements!
We held a little event when we first released this batch of achievements on our Discord server. The challenge was this: who could earn each achievement first?
Congratulations to jfrm for being the first player get all 10 achievements! 🏆
And here are all the other players who first earned each achievement:
- Defeat Easy Bot - Batole
- Defeat Medium Bot - Pandamonium
- Defeat Hard Bot - Silver Tiger
- Defeat Panda Bot - Orange Hornet
- Clean Sweep - jfrm
- Review-Ur - Pandamonium
- No Murcy - Andz
- Full Deploy - Pandamonium
- Crowded - Pandamonium
- Jack of Ur Trades - Autumn Crystal
Congrats to these players for being quick to earn each achievement, to Pandamonium for being the first to get four achievements, and to jfrm for being the first to get all 10!
Got any ideas for achievements?
I would love to hear your ideas! We have already had fun brainstorming achievements in our Discord. Players came up with ideas like Lawnmow-Ur, capture 3 pieces in a row, or Stand Ur Ground, hold the central rosette instead of capturing. Hopefully we can create achievements like these, and your ideas for achievements too, in future releases!
I really hope you enjoy earning each of these achievements, and I look forward to our next release of some more!
Thanks,
~ Paddy L.