Chess Summoner

by azathothep

co-authored: @baz74

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.50

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.75

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.52

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.12

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.58

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.17

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*As a traveler wandering on many places and specially taverns, somebody comes up to you and challenges you to a duel. You accept and pull out your magic cards to win the game !*

Chess Summoner is a strategy game where you play a minimalistic chess game while summoning new chess pieces on the board.

Important note: * Browser version available below has been updated with minor bug fixes, some UX improvements & a few new assets. It differs only slightly from the Jam version, but if you prefer to test out the one we submitted on time, it is perfectly playable and available as a windows build.*

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GAME RULES

Your goal is to hit your opponent with your chess pieces. When your pieces are in range of the opponent, his hands are turning red and your can attack him directly by clicking on it !

Each round, you have 2 choices to make :

+ At the start of your turn, you can either draw a card OR gain a coin

+ Then, you will be able to either summon a chess piece by playing a card OR move a piece already in the board.

When your opponent health turns to 0, you win the game ! But careful, your opponent can hit you too...

Edit note: you can speed up the opponent turn by maintaining the space bar!

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+ Art direction & Graphic design : Basilio MOYA (@baz74)
+ Game design & Programming : Félix BELTHOISE (@azathothep)

*Fonts : Pixel Gothic, Press Start 2P*

Tags: #chess, #pixel art

Genres: card game, strategy

Tools: Unity

Comments21

LDJam user 30265915 Apr 2024, 14:10

Thats game so cool!! Can you play in our game Poizon Pets

dedos15 Apr 2024, 19:19

Played for a long time, very interesting perspective on chess

LDJam user 37628415 Apr 2024, 20:37

Really neat! I like the idea of summoning pieces to your board. I didn't end up finishing, because I wasn't sure what the goal was. Even after reading the description, what I'm doing doesn't seem to be working. Another thing, I would increase the speed of transitions between turns, or at least let the player skip them by clicking once they've read it. I did quite enjoy the concept, though, and it's certainly a unique and creative use of the theme.

Alexandru Barbanoua17 Apr 2024, 20:16

Nice graphics with interesting gameplay I like it when from simple game like chess, find new ways to innovate the gameplay!

Stefan Funke17 Apr 2024, 20:47

Nice one! Very interesting. That was a lot of fun. I wished there were more levels! :)

Here my short feedback, hope it helps:

1) The turn changes and opponent moves are a bit slow. Could be a bit faster, so the player doesn't have to wait so long.

2) I'm not sure if that was a bug or I'm just tired: One time, the tower attacked me, but I didn't lose any heart. Instead I think it damaged itself (not 100% sure about that part).

Great game and awesome pixel art!

Azathothepauthor20 Apr 2024, 13:15

@jack728 thanks for your feedback, yes the goal isn't clear enough (hitting the opponent directly, when a piece is in range of the opponent character) but we plan to update the game in a few days to improve that part

@stefan-funke thanks a lot! yes there is a bug I didn't see where the opponent cannot make you lose health and he loses 2 when you hit him. I'll patch it soon, thanks for pointing it!

Kenguin20 Apr 2024, 13:34

Very nice idea that reminds me of shogi somewhat haha. The graphics are endearing and the gameplay is smooth and fun. Well done!

AlpalcaLad20 Apr 2024, 13:39

Interesting game. Would have been nice to have an in game tutorial and also an indication of what cards i can get. I kept drawing new cards to get something better than a pion and it never happened. Cool game overall and would be interesting to see what it could have improved if it had more time

RainBowBl00d20 Apr 2024, 13:47

This very well done for the 48 hour period, although some music would have been nice.

Azathothepauthor20 Apr 2024, 13:48

@alpalcalad thanks for your feedback, yes there is a bit of balancing to make on the card deck. We plan to update it and add clarity, polish & a few more levels :)

Azathothepauthor20 Apr 2024, 13:50

@rainbowbl00d I perfectly agree, it clearly lacks sounds & music. It would have required a third teammate to make it haha

recyx20 Apr 2024, 14:12

I really liked the art style, color choice and the card draw/discard animations as we also implemented something similar for our game. And the concept is really cool but quite tough to manage your hand while having to play chess at the same time. Great idea!

kaesterin20 Apr 2024, 18:57

Very interesting concept and nice gameplay, cool graphics! Awesome color palette, nice and simple game play

Adam Gallina21 Apr 2024, 20:36

Has a lot of potential, but the gameplay transitions are really slow between turns. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the second level I lost to a glitch, when I hovered over a pawn it showed a valid move forward, but when I clicked on it, the game showed the available moves as the free spaces on my back rank, and wouldn't let me move, which ended up losing the round for me :(

Overall a lot of fun! I liked the puzzle of balancing coins, cards, and moves, and it looks like you put a lot of thought into designing the levels!

mechanicallife22 Apr 2024, 19:50

An interesting take on chess, perhaps the theming is a little weak, but what can you do. I had some real trouble with the second enemy but one shoot the third one. So either it has a little difficulty spike there or I just improved As I played hard to say. Great entry!

Emmatw22 Apr 2024, 19:58

I liked the graphics a lot, the game has a really nice style. I felt like the choices you could make often didn't have a lot of impact, I often ended up with two knights on my hand and no reason to draw new cards so I just got more coins but I didn't really need to use them. I think it would be nice to not have to make one of those choices if you don't feel like you have to. The fights were engaging and each had a different solution that was tricky to figure out! The second opponent was a fun challenge, I lost several times against them! Really nice work!

Life_Lich22 Apr 2024, 21:12

Great entry. My first match took me forever.
But when I realized playing aggressive with the knight was an effective strategy, I almost speedrun the last two.
I took an extra round where I played less aggressively to see how a larger game would feel and it was a lot fun.
I think giving the players more hp and both start with more pieces on the board would be a good idea, maybe also when a piece attacks a player it gets destroyed.

buloz22 Apr 2024, 22:53

Too bad I wasn't able to make my opponent do anything more than drawing and placing pawn, but the art is lit and very polished ty

LDJam user 37416823 Apr 2024, 02:25

Love the chess-summoning combination, pretty unique! The mechanics offered an interesting choice between drawing a card/getting a coin, and moving or summoning a unit. I found that starting with the knight and going immediately for the opponent was pretty consistent, so maybe some other units or strategies could make the game more replayable or larger in the future. Nice job!

Baluj23 Apr 2024, 03:30

It's an interesting concept, I may have failed to see what the objective of each game was but I had a good time playing it. Good job!

oller12527 Apr 2024, 20:10

Really cool variation of chess, including attacking your opponent to win.
Also looks really good and I love the art style. With some audio and a bit of polish it could be a great release.

Other games by @azathothep

co-authored

★3.72

★3.56

co-authored