In Checkmate, you play as chess pieces defending your castle from an attack. The goal is simply to survive as long as possible.
As you play, you will level up through the chess pieces, each one coming with a newer and more deadly attack style. Hold down your left or right mouse button to charge up an attack, and release it to destroy your enemies. The Queen and King also have an extra attack move bound to your shift key.
Your attacks have a cooldown, but that cool down will be reset so long as your your attack connects, allowing you to chain multiple attacks together.
It was very fun and quite challenging when you started getting large hordes of enemies. Although there was a glitch where my knight jumped through the front gate and fell off the world.Nevertheless, enjoyed.
I hope you enjoyed the play-through. I do like how you were able to incorporate the movements from the traditional chess game, but there is some pacing issues that might be ironed out with more observations of play-throughs.
The idea is really interesting, and both the graphics and the music is pretty good. The attacking system is a bit slow, and it is often hard to hit enemies. But overall a well made LD game.
Interesting idea. Got to wave 10 but then I fell off the map. It was quite fun to slash though enemy chess with rook and the queen but when I became the knight I kind of lost that fun because you could just spam moving with its instant teleportation to the next place and avoid any damage(also the energy was unlimited for some reason). But overall I liked the gameplay though it needs a bit more polishing.
Loved the look of the game! I really enjoyed how the white pieces had the gold flair, while the black pieces had sharp protrusions. Wish leveling up was easier - I couldn't get passed the Knight. Good job!
Really enjoyed the game! Not super sure what the genres were (board game/tower defense?) but good job duct taping them together! The music was rad, the controls were fun (the king was my downfall on wave 13), would have loved to see some more elaborate textures/shaders maybe (though the level design was cool, the map was large, and I really loved the stained glass in the chapel!) Kick ass!
That was incredibly fun. The thought of a survival-based chess game was nothing short but genius. It was especially satisfying when I first leveled up to Rook and bashed through a string of enemies.
The only real criticism I can offer is that the graphics could use a bit of work, but nothing too glaringly bad. Great work!
Amazingly Done! Really enjoined the gameplay it was really cool and well made with the theme, Graphics is also amazing the UI & Menu need a bit of polish but all the rest is great! Amazing Game, Keep up the good work!
Ahh! I was really enjoying myself and then died on the king. Not sure how you're supposed to win that one with such a short attack range. Big difference coming down from the queen. However I must say this is easily the most _fun_ game I've played so far this year, so hats off to you for that and congrats on the very unique concept.
Neat premise, visual style and the audio is also fitting. With a little polish and a doubling down on the theme, this could be a great game. As is, good concept and solid execution.
Awesome game. I like the mechanics and the pacing. I ran into an issue where one of my programs stole focus and the game lost capture of my cursor, I kept clicking applications on my other monitors lol. It was totally worth it though. Nicely done.
Real time chess with satisfying combat. You definitely hit the theme right on the head.
The environment is great, the game is intuitive (as a chess player, at least), and it's really just a cool, unique and fun to play project. I couldn't win but I'm probably not done trying.
I got a nice little surprise when I realised the pawn could only move forwards and attack diagonal. I don't know what I expected haha. Very well done, fantastic job.
Very cool game! The concept is really unique and loads of fun, I also like you can chain attacks, it punishes mistakes harder. Also really polished. I died in the queen (I would say it looked like a downgrade since you can only attack in diagonals and has a bigger cooldown, but it has a special attack, just saw it now in the description, it may offset that). I think a line drawn in the ground would be better too, it's hard to know the path the piece is gonna make when diagonal with that curved line. The horse was a neat idea too. I may try to get to the king later.
I like your game. Especially leveling up felt satisfying, with stronger and more powerful controls. Well done. I think loading up and letting go, wasnt getting me to the place it showed me that it would get me to, which was frustrating. Maybe leveling shouldnt take that long, I felt that at 80% xp I was getting tired of the mechanic I had. Other than that it was really fun. New enemies having new movements, that was great. Maybe you should face your next level (as a pawn, the tower) as an enemy. That way you teach the player the next mechanic already, AND make him want that cool new ability. And he feels even more like he earned it. It could be the boss that he needs to take down before he can get his level up. Cheers
Really cool concept. It feels much better with the fix. The art is great for an LD game and the core mechanic is really fun. It felt sort of like Gun Game, and I could see this being a great multiplayer title.
Wow that was awesome! I made it half way through round 14 on my second time playing. I loved how all the pieces had their own unique moves and play styles. The castle was large and fun to explore and the health packs encouraged moving around from room to room. My favorite unit was probably the queen... I really liked how you could charge up her attack and just plow through rows of enemies. The music and sound effects were pleasant as well. Great job guys, that was a lot of fun. :)
The graphics though, the models are cool, but they seem waaaaaaaay too high poly in some cases, and you have SO many lights in the level, but the overall lighting isn't great. This leads to performance being super low relative to the quality of the graphics.
besides that though, the game is really fun and made quite well!
I feel like the idea of advancing from pawn to king is really enjoyable. I don't know why, but many times I was trying to attack, but the piece appeared in red even though there was nothing in front of me. So yeah, minor bug. But appart from that, I enjoyed the game a lot. A pretty solid entry. Nice job guys
@Merrol, I think what you're seeing with the piece being red is actually your attack on cooldown. If your attack doesn't connect, there is a short time you have to wait before you can attack again. We really wanted to tutorialize that better, but time ran out (as always, lol).
@GiovanniBarrottu You raise a really good point! For the first time ever we had a dedicated modeler and got a little too carried away with it. We're looking at cutting way down on the polys now. What are your suggestions for overall lighting?
Wow, I never really thought that this concept could be interesting, I was wrong. I really like how you handled chess pieces attacks, liked the rook attack sound, pawn moving only forward is a nice touch. The game was suprisingly fun overall and it was satisfying to break into swarms of enemy piceses and break them all.
Super fun game! Took a bit of getting used to but it was very fun to see how the pieces moved and attacked. I really enjoy chess and it was honestly exciting to get to play it in such and interesting and novel way. The elevator music was a nice touch since the overall game seemed to have kind of a placid feel, much like a game of chess. :)
This is pretty fun! I made it up to king but was then quickly overwhelmed.
It's a great progression system that uses the theme perfectly. I think it might be cool if it was even stricter about following the chessboard, like requiring attacks to be at 90-degree angles, but that could also easily be less fun. Great work!
Wow, this is a really good game! It's really fun and the enviroments are great. The concept is brillant, good job with the mix of generes. I found that some pieces were worse than their previous level, but surely it's because for the time limitation of the jam and with some balancing changes it would be perfect. Congratulations!
This game is really well made and a great idea. The only thing is that I wish that the second attack was a middle click of the mouse or space instead of shift. The world is great and interesting looking but game play wise is there is no reason to leave the openness of the yard. Being in rooms made it harder. If you had to pick up an item somewhere or kill someone in a certain room it would give you a better reason to leave the yard. I love how the pieces break apart and the different abilities of the pieces. Maybe my favorite game I have played so far. Well done.
@Paul-Avallone Thank you so much for the kind words! As for the middle click... I thought about that but my middle click on my mouse doesn't work. And while that's a problem unique to me I didn't want to make a game I couldn't play properly lol.
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I hope you enjoyed the play-through. I do like how you were able to incorporate the movements from the traditional chess game, but there is some pacing issues that might be ironed out with more observations of play-throughs.
Good Game!
The only real criticism I can offer is that the graphics could use a bit of work, but nothing too glaringly bad. Great work!
Really enjoined the gameplay it was really cool and well made with the theme, Graphics is also amazing the UI & Menu need a bit of polish but all the rest is great!
Amazing Game, Keep up the good work!
The environment is great, the game is intuitive (as a chess player, at least), and it's really just a cool, unique and fun to play project. I couldn't win but I'm probably not done trying.
Very well done, fantastic job.
Cheers
The graphics though, the models are cool, but they seem waaaaaaaay too high poly in some cases, and you have SO many lights in the level, but the overall lighting isn't great. This leads to performance being super low relative to the quality of the graphics.
besides that though, the game is really fun and made quite well!
Thanks for making this game!
The elevator music was a nice touch since the overall game seemed to have kind of a placid feel, much like a game of chess. :)
It's a great progression system that uses the theme perfectly. I think it might be cool if it was even stricter about following the chessboard, like requiring attacks to be at 90-degree angles, but that could also easily be less fun. Great work!
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape