CHESSN’T week 1 devlog – CHESSN’T DEVLOG

March 4, 2024

I am supposed to post every Sunday but I got caught up in making the art for the previews so I ran out of time sorry 🙁

ART PROGRESS

I have made some basic chess pieces for the game. The design is still tentative but I think I like how they turned out. I attached two pictures, one without and one with the effects when you hover or click on a piece to move it so its easier to see which piece you wish to move. I made it this way because I really want the game to be isometric pixel art style. The game also wont just be set on a normal chessboard because that’s boring. As you progress throughout the game, the board and the pieces will evolve especially once you start fighting the bosses. You will also be able to equip these new evolved pieces.

GAME FEATURES & SPECIAL ABILITIES

Also made changes on how I want this game to be like in the future. I envision a roguelite chess game that’s NOT a chess game (very important) where you fight simulated enemies and eventually fight bosses of increasing difficulty. The bosses will be based on the chess pieces. First would be the Pawn God, Divine Bishop. Gallant Knight, Regal Rook, Imperial King, Primordial Queen. Each of the bosses will have their own special ability.

Once you defeat a boss, you are able to equip one favor which allows you to use one of the bosses special ability once in your own per game. Some of the abilities can only be used on certain conditions. Like for the bishop, knight, and rook, you can only use them once you only have 1 piece left. For the pawn, you can only use at the start of the battle, the king and queen abilities can be used anytime. This also affects how the bosses will use their abilities. I already have some ideas in mind for the special abilities but I wish to refine how they work so I’ll probably talk about it next week.

INNATE ABILITIES

To fully bring home the fact that this is NOT a chess game, I will also be introducing new INNATE abilities for each of the chess pieces.

The Pawn has the same ability from the original chess game where once you reach the enemy’s side, you can promote to a bishop, knight, rook, or queen. But you can also choose to sacrifice your pawn to instantly use, or replenish a use on your special ability.

The Bishop now be able to ricochet at the side of the walls unless they are blocked by any piece. In theory, if your bishop isn’t blocked by anything, you can essentially move in a rectangular shape as shown below.

The Knight’s ability is a bit more complicated. As shown below, the knight can go forwards and backwards. The green and the pink markings represent the spaces in between where the knight is currently at, and where the knight will go. One of any piece in the “between” areas that are marked green and pink can move one space forward or backward right after the knight moves ON THE SAME TURN. The ability is kinda complicated to explain right now but ill refine my wording in the future. For now just know that this ability will spark new strategies. Imagine turning a white tile bishop into a black tile bishop.

The Rook’s ability is like a combination of the knight and the bishop. The rook essentially will act like a billiard ball where they can push any friendly piece one by one block. This can also work in all directions, not just forward. This ability can be combined with the knight’s boost ability so in theory, you can essentially move 3 or more pieces with the right placement of the rooks and knights.

(For the queen and the king ability I don’t have any previews right now because I ran out of time making the art. Imagination is key 🙂)

For the King piece, its ability is reliant on your other pieces. When one of your pieces eats an enemy piece, on the next turn only, the king is able to move as the eaten piece. For example, if one of your pieces eats the enemy bishop, for the next turn, you can either move one of your other pieces, or move the king that has the ability to move as a bishop. Cool right. (this is a direct reference to a certain game 😉)

Finally, the Queen’s ability is kinda broken so she can only be moved once every 2 turns. The queen is basically a Tron bike. When she moves, she can create a wall the makes it so that yours or the enemy pieces can’t move through it essentially making a barrier that lasts 1 turn. Imagine a queen cutting the board in half, the wall only works for one turn so that it gives other pieces to move freely before the queen can move again so as to not spam the ability.

CHESS? NO, CHESSN’T

Now the nail in the coffin, the game now doesn’t end when the king gets eaten. I thought that fighting a bunch of bosses and grunts in chess would take too long in a normal game progression wise especially since you most likely fight the bosses multiple times. So now the game will end within a certain amount of rounds (idk how many rounds yet) and whoever has more pieces by the end wins.

For tiebreakers. It will basically be a sudden death where the next person who eats a piece wins the game. The board will also get smaller by one row/column. The soon-to-be-removed row/column will be highlighted 3 rounds before the game ends to allow the players to strategize. It is random which row/column will be removed. (this sort of board manipulation is like a sneak peek on what the special abilities will be 😉)

That was a lot for one week but most of these are still up in the air and might change as time goes on.

Leave suggestion below and Ill be back after one week for another progress update.