It's finally here, let the campaign begin! To celebrate the launch of Duat, we've decided to put together a little something that no one asked for but we just think is neat. 

Over at Unphazed Games we’re big fans of Chess. My dear friend and co-publisher Devon Trevelyan owns the appropriately named Knight Moves Cafe in Brookline, MA and competed nationally in his youth. I, on the other hand, clawed my way up to an unremarkable 1000 rating on chess.com and am immensely proud of it. 

Needless to say, when I began designing a similarly strategic abstract strategy game like Duat, Devon proved to be a worthy (see: oppressively, relentlessly good) playtester and partner with whom to play. Those many playtests led us to the decision that Duat would benefit from a notation system similar to those found in other abstract games such as Chess, Tak, Hive, etc. So without further ado, here's an extraneous way to record and analyze your games because it's ~cool~

Moves are denoted as pairs of information that mark a piece’s location and direction at different times. In this example, a piece begins on the space 2B facing North (Compass directions are dictated from the side of the player with the black pieces). The piece then moves one space forward, ending on the space 3B and still facing North. This move is then summarized as: 2BN - 3BN. 

A full turn can be up to three moves long, and could be denoted as:

2BN - 3BN

3BN - 3BE

3BE - 3CE 

Where the piece moves North, turns to the East, then moves East.

In the future if anyone posts a board state and asks for a way out of a given predicament, you can now confidently reply with a sequence of suave notated moves. That or just let them know they're boned.

Either way, we're grateful to have you join us here on the fields of Duat! 
- Caleb Carvalho, Designer