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My impression is, you had a cool idea - i absolutely agree! And you realized it - which not everone achieves, so honestly: patt yourself on the back, really. You also layed the foundation would could become a cool game, for instance: there is skills, pieces, you can select them (card-like interface at the bottom) etc. All you need for the mechanics. Even the music is there, and I like it - very relaxing and still stimulating with a rich melody. Well chosen! I have some issues with the game, though:
What I don't get is why you have to select move versus attack. The pieces work like in real chess, so, there is no need to let the player have to click on attack versus move. Selecting a piece and the destination should be enough, because empty tile -> move, opponent there -> attack.
The health bar is a valid idea, but I must admit I don't like it at all, because it breaks all the strategic fun of the game - BUT: this is just MY opinion. I might include a health bar only for exceptional cases, i.e., all pieces have only 1 HP (not 4 HP) per default, but some skill (or neighborhood to some other skillful piece) would extend this pieces HP from 1 to 2 HPs. In that case, this piece is in an exceptionally healty state, and then the HPs would be more interesting. Again: just my personal opinion. You don't have to agree.
Pawn reaching the end of the board -> no conversion, that's ok, but then there should(?)/could be something else.
I saw a tile destroyer skill, but I was not allowed to use it somehow. Anyway of this issue, but hey, these skills sound like the real fun. Also make obstacles on the board, maybe randomly and also by the players. Also skills to transform tiles from ground to water and then allow some pieces to walk through water and other not. Stuff like this could make the RPG-ish chess more fun.
And yes, the AI opponent... woah, that is actually not easy to do well. This might become a hard challenge. But I agree with the Dragon... that in the current state the game is ways too easy and thus looses the challenge and fun to play.
BUT, as I said at the start: I like the idea und you laid the foundation for making a cool game. Keep the motivation and experiment with the potential you have. Looking forward to next versions. You can use the TheWoodlander's discord server to inform us and discuss with us.
Thanks for your great feedback, it was really helpful knowing what was exactly the issues in my game and I appreciate how you managed to explain them so well.
For the Attack/Move thing, I really REALLY like your idea of making them the same thing, I envisioned at first that the game would have a lot more skills than it has at the moment, some of which have different effects depending on wether you're attacking or just moving, but I didn't manage my time very well so I ended up with only 4 skills.
In case of the health bar, I made it purely to make the king a more valuable piece, in the future I think of making a skill called "Regular chess" that makes all pieces have 1 HP ;).
Pawns reaching the end is a BAD overlook on my part, I'm sorry.
The tile destroyer not working is a bug I encountered and I'm not sure if I actually fixed it entirely, also the water tile idea is pretty good, thank you for it.
The AI is honestly so bad, the first 3 stages it just doing things randomly, and in the later stages it just gets agressive and tries to prioritize attacking over winning, I'll have to work on that more.
Thanks a lot for your review of the game and for the discord server, I couldn't find it anywehre, so if you can please send me the link for it.
I'm glad I could help. The Link for the Discord Server is at very the bottom of the Jam page:
/jam/game-demo-jam-ii-100-in-prizes
CU
Starting the game, it feels like parts are cut off. The hearts at the top were cut off slightly, while the bottom ones go right up to the edge. Switching to fullscreen, the top hearts go to the edge, and the bottom ones are cut off at about the half way point. Exiting fullscreen the blue hearts moved up a ways to be next to the bottom right corner of the board. I could also now see the top of the Pawn card, which had previously been off screen.
I used summon to place a Pawn. It then went back to the bottom edge so I could just see the name at the top and a little more below it. Summon was greyed out. I moved my Pawn across the board and the opponent avoided it. It got to the end and then seemed to be stuck. I used my King to get close to the opponent and was able to beat them, though it was just a matter of whoever struck first won.
I picked a new piece and the next round started with the cards off screen again. Clicking on Summon brought them up.
The CPU is not very smart. They often moved into positions that let me attack them. The Queen gave me some trouble due to her power, but I had 2 Rooks. I lost 1 to her, and the other was at half health. Then I faced their Rook. I got into position and attacked them. Instead of striking back and finishing off my Rook, they moved away. I moved my King up slowly, as they moved back and forth across the top row. When my King was 1 row from the top I moved diagonally near their piece. They moved down 2 tiles, remaining in range of my attack, allowing me to end the fight with my next move.
The game could use with some basic instructions, even if just on the game page. The enemy logic could use with being less suicidal, though I do acknowledge that with so few pieces, and your starters being slow to move, it could be a long game of chase if they were too smart. The Pawns being unable to upgrade, or do anything, once they reached the other edge was an unpleasant surprize. It would be nice if they could upgrade or do something more at that point.
Thanks for your great feedback, I'll try my best to not create many excuses as possible.
The UI is so junky and I agree with you in that regard, I did not tested it on an actual itch.io page, so it had a lot of problems, it was also too basic and not as good as I thought it would be.
For the CPU, it's actually picking every possible action and choosing one of them randomly, hence it's extremely suicidal, however it is switched to a more smart and very agressive version after the 3rd level, and I took that design decision in order to make it easier for players to farm some summoning cards and skills before facing a "tough" opponent, it's definitely not the best design choice but it was all I had at the time.
I'm definitely gonna improve the demo once the jam is finished so saty tuned for that.
And thanks for your detailed feedback it was really informative.
It's very intuitive because it's played with classic chess pieces; yet mechanics like piece health, movement limitations, swap etc. successfully keep it interesting. Also, I've encountered a bug with the summoning mechanic, where the animated piece card is not always selected correctly.
Thanks for the feedback, and I'm so sorry for that bug it was on me because it involved a lot of maths that I couldn't figure out correctly in a short moment of time.
i think this game so good but, need a tutorial