Board to Death

by landosystems

co-authored: @doug-graham, @jeffrey-hwang, @pete-valeo, @bainerd, @brossman, @matso

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.88

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.77

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.94

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.06

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.79

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.75

- HTML5/WebGL
- Desktop/Java
- Source

Board to Death: Monarchs and Monsters ️#

Long live the King :crown: - or not!

An evil wizard and his army of monsters are trying to storm your castle, and it's up to you to save the kingdom by summoning your team of warriors in this turn-based combat simulation.

Choose from a familiar set of warriors - pawns, knights, rooks, bishops, and queens - give them the orders: march or fight!

You have a limited number of moves you can spend in each round! though, so you'll want to be strategic about which piece goes where.
Do you want the pawn who is cheap to summon but limited in range and strength, or the rook who can move but also costs more to spawn?

If your pieces get to the wizard's side of the field first, you win - but if any of the monsters make it through your gates, it's the end of the line for the monarch.

Controls:

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* :mouse_three_button: controls!
* Summon fighters via turn-based combat
* Choose from a familiar set of fighters: pawns, knights, rooks, bishops, and queens
* Spend your limited number of action points each round

About the Team:

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LandoSystems is a group of jammers from Madison, Wisconsin that varies in size from 2 to 12 people. This is the team's 30th Ludum Dare game!! :tada:

Team Members:

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Code:
- Doug Graham dsgraham :elephant: dsgraham on mastodon
- Brian Ploeckelman PalpatinesSmile :elephant: brian on mastodon
- Jeffrey Hwang :elephant: jeffreyhwang on mastodon
- Brian Rossman

Art:
- Matt Neumann

Music, Writing, Assorted Coolness:
- Pete V
- Luke Bain

Attribution:

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- kenney.nl - misc ui elements and icons

Comments21

Richard Ortiz16 Apr 2024, 02:28

Great game, love the chess like combat.

Adam Konig16 Apr 2024, 02:47

Very fun and interesting mechanic to summon multiple of your chess pieces. Felt a little slow, but overall had a good time and played to credits. Nice work!

Wumbomancer16 Apr 2024, 02:49

Wow, a lot of stuff here! Great take on the classic "summon mobs in a line" game. Mechanics were well implemented, the story matched the art style really well. Overall awesome game!

Katelyn Trout16 Apr 2024, 02:51

wow i feel like i know how to chess now?! also loved the scrapped ideas. Woe vs Raid???? Iconic

Kilthorne16 Apr 2024, 03:18

Once you figure out how the movement works it gets much more engaging. Reminds me of the board game 'Duke'.

Doonutsaur16 Apr 2024, 16:43

very nice and polished. good job! It would be easier if the movement shows when I hover over the characters.

DzejPi16 Apr 2024, 17:27

Wow, that's a lot of content. It always is a huge difference between Compo and Jam games. :) That's pretty impressive that this is your 30th game, and it shows. I like the mechanics (and I don't usually enjoy turn-based games!), take on the theme and those effects; it looks great! And another impressive thing is that it's written in Java, you don't see that much nowadays. I would also prefer if it was a little bit faster, but otherwise this is really impressive and well made entry!

anaastaska16 Apr 2024, 20:21

woow, it is great game. A huge amount of content and really interesting gameplay.

Lélek Hunor Kadosa17 Apr 2024, 22:32

A very good game. I love how it looks and feels to play

Trevor Lentz17 Apr 2024, 23:43

The polish on this is jam is wild. From the intro page turns, transitioning the screen into the game, the characters jumping, killing, or being summoned. Impressive. The music and sounds fit quite well, with solid song loop length that never got annoying. Gameplay of the turn based system is fleshed out with care.

The tone and visuals of this game really reminded me of Unepic. Great work. :)

LDJam user 38567118 Apr 2024, 06:04

This is a really awesome submission!

While it was very simple to understand how to play, it is clear that the is a lot of mastery and strategies that can be learned.

The art style and sound design for this game is also very charming!

Great job!

DenisMarasan18 Apr 2024, 07:30

Fun narrative, solid core. Rock on!

Snory18 Apr 2024, 16:40

Wow, originally I was about to create some turn based myself, but I thought it is impossible to come up with something, but you proved me wrong! It is a bit slow so I did not managed to finish the game, but I liked the take on chess, the music matching the art and the humor (are you really a go player?).

Thank you for your submission.

Joshua Miller-Pio18 Apr 2024, 16:58

Despite the name of the game, i was not bored at all. Loved it!

Mekyi18 Apr 2024, 17:58

What a great experience playing this was! Really liked the idea and polished it feels.

angelalb18 Apr 2024, 20:08

I spent way too long at this. I may be very bad at chess. Nice game, I liked how it was kind of chess-based, but it wasn't chess, not even the movements and attacks. I had fun! I also had a laugh at the list of dismissed ideas, it felt very familiar.

MatthewDrake19 Apr 2024, 21:58

I'm not very tactical so it took me a bit of time to come up with a battle plan, but I really enjoyed how this all came together. Visuals are well polished, good humour too. Well done!