Levels & Achievements

Odin’s Viking Chess is one purchase. No advertising, no tracking, nothing to buy inside — every board, every opponent and every one of the badges below is in the app the moment you install it. What follows is the whole scoring system: your rank is a level that only ever climbs, 18 leaderboards put you next to everyone else playing, and 30 achievements worth 876 points mark the things worth doing once.

The rank ladder

Finish a game and it earns XP. XP raises your level, and the gold ring around the number on the home screen fills as you climb. There is no way down: a level you have reached is yours, on every device your iCloud account signs into.

Titles

Every level carries a title from the longhouse — the same ladder Odin’s Checkers climbs. The last one is open-ended: it takes a new numeral every 5 levels, so there is always something above you.

What a game is worth

A win earns the full amount, a draw half of it, and a loss a quarter — so sitting down with a stronger opponent is never the wrong move, and neither is taking the harder side.

The four computer rows are the rate before the board multiplier in the next table; games against people are the same on every board.

Pass & Play earns nothing, because one person is playing both sides, and neither does a game with the coach switched on: the coach played too. A coached win still counts on your record and on every leaderboard below — it simply does not move the ladder. A hint on its own changes nothing about XP; it only keeps that game off the Unaided badge.

What each board is worth

A game of Brandub on seven squares a side is not a game of Alea Evangelii on nineteen, so the boards are not worth the same. Every solo game is scaled by its board’s multiplier before anything else happens to it.

The attackers move first on ten of the twelve boards; the defenders move first on Sea Battle; a coin toss decides on Imperial Contest. You choose your side for every solo game, and the computer takes the other; a game against a person deals the sides by coin toss and swaps them on the rematch.

The daily rhythm

The first game you finish each day on each board earns a 20 XP bonus on top of everything else. Twelve boards means up to 240 XP a day just for moving around, which is the point: breadth is a daily habit rather than a grind on one queue.

Games against the computer are capped at 600 XP a day — five Expert wins at the standard rate. Games against people are never capped.

The challenge multiplier

Online games carry a challenge multiplier set by the gap between your level and your opponent's. It starts at 1× for an even match and moves 0.08 for every level between you — up as they get stronger, down as they get weaker — with a floor of 0.25× and a ceiling of 3×. It is locked when the match starts and it applies to a win, a draw and a loss alike. Beating someone far above you is worth a great deal; beating someone far below you counts for almost nothing.

The ceiling belongs to the underdog by construction: it takes an opponent 25 levels above you — a first-day player toppling a Grand King — and it is the one result allowed to move you more than a level in a single game.

Nearby play never carries a challenge multiplier — a local connection has no rank to read.

The climb

Each level requires 20% more XP than the one before it: 300 XP to leave Level 1, and steadily more after that. Early levels come quickly; the later ones are meant to take a while.

Leaderboards

18 of them, all through Game Center. Sign in on your device and they fill themselves in as you play; the app never asks you for anything, and the ladder above works whether you sign in or not.

One leaderboard per board

Twelve more, one for each board. Those wins land on Total Wins as well.

Achievements

30 badges worth 876 points. Three of them stay hidden in Game Center until you earn them.

First steps

Beating the computer

Wins that add up

Played with style

Climbing the ladder

Every board

Where to find all this

Everything above is in the Longhouse, the app’s main menu. Your Rank shows your badge, your title and the XP to your next level, and it states the rule quoted at the top of this page. Your Games keeps the record every leaderboard is submitted from. Trophies — the row that appears once you are signed in to Game Center — opens the Game Center dashboard, where the leaderboards and badges themselves live. The app carries its own button rather than relying on the floating Game Center badge, because that badge cannot be reached with an Apple TV remote.

Your level is yours whether or not you are signed in: XP is stored on your device and synced through your own iCloud account. Game Center is only what puts you on a board next to other people.