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Rulehouse's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #1 | 4.561 | 4.561 |
| Gameplay | #1 | 4.591 | 4.591 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.328 | 4.328 |
| Innovation | #7 | 4.394 | 4.394 |
| Audio | #15 | 4.121 | 4.121 |
| Visuals | #44 | 4.470 | 4.470 |
| Theme | #174 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
Ranked from 66 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
Often a 'strange' place is not strange because of the place itself, but because of the people and the rules in that place. House Rules applies that idea to a new type of chess, where every strange person has their own strange rules -all across the globe.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
Feel - MoreMountains
Text Animator - Febucci
Odin - Sirenix
DOTween
Unity
Wikimedia Commons Photos
How many people worked on the game?4
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Comments
This felt great to play! I love the twist and simplification of a chess game and it presents itself quite well. The animations and art were super clean and polished, really enjoyed playing this.
Thanks for the compliments! We wanted to make chess simpler then build it back up crazy was the idea, glad it worked out and you liked it. The art took me a while, but I had a ton of fun doing it since it wasnt what I normally do. I actually took a whole bunch reference pics of my own hands then made those in aseprite, which has now crowded my phone with a lot of awkward photos lol. But thanks for playing!
YES, I BEAT THAT MONKEY!!! This is really hard, but I love it!
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO AAAAAAAAAA (Nice one!)
In hindsight, probably could've made him a little easier, but glad you liked it anyways!
Finding new games which use chess as base idea it a cool thing, love the art too!!
Yeah we decided we wanted to do chess but easier and then eventually insane was the concept. Very glad and honestly surprised it worked out so well. And thanks for the complements on the art, spent a lot of time trying to nail the vibe. Thanks for playing!
I love how this game looks
Thank you! I spent a lot of my time doing the hand animations, designing pieces, and doing the dialog avatars so I'm glad you enjoy them!
This was such a cool twist on something classic. It feels super polished and way deeper than I expected going in. I ended up playing way longer than I planned because each level kept changing things up just enough to stay interesting and honestly, it’s kind of addicting.
Thank you so much! We tried really hard to make the narrative and difficulty curve engaging enough to keep interest. Also we tried to cram as much content in as possible without it feeling too rushed which is why decided to make the bonus stages. :)
Such a fun concept. I really like the progression of difficulty and really changing up the nature of such a classic game. I wasnt at all expecting there to be so many levels and to be captivating. Fantastic game and a wonderful job.
Really appreciate it! We were really focused this time about making sure our core mechanic was really simple and fun then taking that and running with it as far as we could in a week. Glad you enjoyed it, and we're planning on making a second version with revised story and new stages so stay tuned!
Great Game. Loads of polish, I particularly love the UI and level selection. Each match felt really different and intresting. I loved the asymmetry.
Thank you! The map selection was completely inspired by snes street fighter and our musician did a great job making a new track for every stage to really get the vibe right. Jacob, our chess back-end member, did a great job designing and made tons of tons of boards before grabbing the ones he thought played best.
Incredible visuals, very polished game! I enjoyed it quite a lot. My only problem with it is that in the French board I found it very easy to get a draw every time unless the french just did a stupid move, but I guess with just pawns it is what it is XD. Nice work!
Haha, so true! Jacob, our chess backend member, added a blunder coefficient, so its totally random when they mess up and you kind of need to get lucky. But thanks so much for playing and the nice comment!
Very polished and nice, I was able to go through all levels, kept me engaged for the entire run, very solid entry
Thanks for finishing it, it means a lot to the team!
Impressive polish and content for one week. A final version could be good in the future. Good job !
Thanks a lot, we really pushed it to try and get as much content as we could and it's been surreal to see people playing all/most of it. We will be making a bigger and final version in the future so stay tuned and thanks for the support!
That was great. Genuinely enjoyed the gameplay and would play more. The oldschool vibe was spot on. Characters and writing were on point, the soundtrack fit perfectly, and just overall very polished. Really well done.
Thanks a ton! The concept hit a sweet spot for all the teams talents, and it all came together much better than we were expecting. We hope to make a second version with more stages and a more cohesive plot line so stay tuned, and thanks again for playing and enjoying!
Incroyable !
Merci beaucoup!
Incredibly fun, I played through every level. The game feels totally complete and cohesive across all categories. Great work on the difficulty curve, each level felt like a natural step up from the last. Loved the street fighter/world tour plot line. My favourite piece was the inverted pawn, but all of the "new" pieces had some interesting design.
Thanks for a wonderful game :)
No thank you for playing! Glad you caught the street fighter homeage that's exactly what I was shooting for in the map design. Props go to Jacob on the team for the inverted pawn, he did a great job designing the pieces. We're so surprised that people liked it so much and the team loved making it so we're definitely making a longer version, so stay tuned! Thanks again!
I didn't know anything about chess, but since it started with one type of piece, I immediately enjoyed it. It's also good that the difficulty level isn't too high. The 16-bit style pixel art and unique characters were amazing!! Great work!
Thank you so much! We tried to make it more simple than chess but also new enough that people would be interested. A lot of my time was spent designing the characters and doing the hands and environments so I'm glad you enjoyed them!
I’ve really enjoyed playing chess lately and this game was a fun take on it. Pixel art style was fun and I’m glad you showed the options on where the pieces could move.
Thank a bunch! The art was a ton of fun to do, especially all the hands and dialog pictures, so I'm glad you enjoyed it. For the piece placing UI, as soon as my teammate showed me how he coded the reverse pawn, I was like we need to way to convey this to the player or thats gonna be every comment lol
Wow, this is really nice! I am never a fan of chess games, but this is so unique. The theme of each levels are also extremely funny, so apparently angels play chess, and the soviets still exist on the moon. Who knew. The game is also pretty hard, especially against the AI, which is quite nicely done. I can't help but wonder how one could even write a chess AI in just seven days. Good job!
Other things I like:
Suggestions:
Anyway, this is really well done, and I hope you keep up the good work!
Thank you so much for trying out the game! Yeah after implementing the dialog system, we are able to accept a diagram sprite to show certain piece would move, but we didn't have enough time to make those sprites thus get extra dialog to explain new pieces. But we will implement that once in the near future. Stay tuned!
I love hearing that non chess fans are finding it fun, we tried to make it more simple, more fun, but also challenging? So to hear that is really awesome. And yes, coding the Chess AI was difficult. Jacob on our team spent most of his time working on that and in the last several days of the jam he was building test scenarios for board states that could break the AIs brain and tweaking it til it worked, so major props to him.
He ended up coding like a blundering coefficient even so that the early rounds the AI consistently plays bad lol.
Also thanks for playing the whole way through, we added those bonus stages for the players who wanted that extra challenge. I think Jacob set the AI to max settings for the last stage, so you beat our best stuff (for now!)
For the suggestions, totally right about the piece moves. We were thinking maybe like an extended hover tooltip would be good, or like a key press for info? And for the story, also yeah, we really planned out the first seven stages and the last three just were cobbled together at the end. Hope to address that in the post jam touch up a bit.
But thanks for completing our game and giving great feedback, means a ton!
This game is really addictive, especially for someone who likes playing chess :D I like the way you define the theme strange, sometimes its not the place that make it strange~ W game
Yes as chess players ourselves its so awesome to see that other chess people enjoyed it! And for the theme, I'm glad you liked our interpretation, we tried extra hard to embody the theme while keeping the gameplay chess which was a little hard but it came out way better than we anticipated to be honest lol.
Thank you!!!
Very addictive and a great concept.
Thank you, its awesome to hear :)
Easily in my top 3 of the games ive played so far. So fun, visuals are great, sounds and music on point, dialoge hilarious and the difficulty curve is perfect.
One thing I'd personally like to see if you take this idea further is an option to make right clicking cancel a move, I found myself right clicking to reset my piece more than once and it placed it where I didnt want it to. Left click to place - right click to cancel just seems natural to me, but I dont know if im just an outlier.
Wow thanks so much for the kind words! As soon as I read right click to cancel, I was like yeah we should add that lol. That will definitely be in the post jam patch with some other small tweaks I'm surprised no ones mentioned yet...
Also let me know if you have any other advice, the team loved making this and if people love playing it, I don't see why we wouldn't develop it further. Thanks for playing!
Really nice game. I like chess so much and this remake is so creative, even though it's simple. The dialogues are fun and the scenarios are well planned. I suffered a bit in the 10th level, but the music that plays in the level is good enough to not get me frustrated.
Great job guys!
Our musician, Gabe, was really happy to hear this. We actually made that whole tenth stage design just because he had made that track and we were trying to think how to make an epic scenario to match it's hype.
Thanks so much for the kind words and for playing!