itch.io

Really fun idea! I threw my lot in the hat, let's see what becomes of it!

Hey, I've played it for 30 mins and left an extensive feedback. In essence I would like to suggest a pivot in terms of gameplay as it does not quite work for me. However, I'd love to see you succeed since this world has character and flair!

Thank you for clarifying! 

I will definitely to continue working on making the tutorial more accessible (not in the next update but in the near future).

So I'll gladly ping you once I'm there ;-) Good luck with Dilock in the meantime, I'm hungry for more puzzles!!

Thank you for trying the tutorial and for your feedback! I'd like to clarify a couple of things:

> when there is first hint about dragging a figure, it occured on a brown field which doesn't allow dragging, so it took me a while to zoom out and zoom in to blue desk
=> Does that mean that it was not intuitive for you that the piece needs to be dragged on the blue board?

> Unfortunatelly wasn't able to finish tutorial (after I moved all figures to fields marked as '?' I didn't get part with another set of figures to place)
=> so you've made it to the part where it says "Good luck detective!" and weren't able to proceed?

Working on making the tutorial more clear and intuitive so this feedback is super valuable. Thanks again! 

Hey, just checked out the game. Some observations:
- It is hard right now to judge the game since it has no single player variant and I'm not asking my friends to sit at the same computer in order to test it :D
- It is quite hard for me to understand what the main innovation here is since I find the text difficult to read. It has a distinct AI smell to it although I might be mistaken since you've specified that no gen AI was involved. In any case the language is quite swollen and not to the point. I'd suggest to rewrite it so that the reader can parse the information at first glance within the first couple of paragraphs.
- not sure if Boomerang and Traitor are different enough as concepts. Maybe it makes sense to start with one of these and refine that before going further?
- "Puzzle" and "Simulation" are definitely not the right genres.
- The "Physical game" category is appropriate for this concept, however... it is a digital game

My suggestion: Release the game as a well laid out and understandable pint-and-play PDF first. Find some board game enthusiasts (I know there is a chess variants subreddit on Reddit for instance, there might be one for checkers as well). Get some feedback that way and refine the concept. Then once you have a good concept you can think about creating a digital game from it.

Hope the feedback helps. Have a great day! 

I genuinely enjoyed the puzzles! Despite it being a demo it already shows a high degree of visual polish (love how the lines strech and bounce when the orb flies around). Super promising and extensible idea. I'm looking forward to more puzzles and new puzzle elements. 
Also I find it impressive that the puzzle is visually clear and understandable without any written instruction. That speaks for strong visual and puzzle design, really good job!
Little polish idea: the orb could follow the player's cursor with it's gaze (like the shapes do in Is this Seat Taken for instance)

I did & left a comment and review :D

At least as charming and funny as the first part but way more ambitious! I mean the demo alone is about as long as the whole first part. Looks way more polished as well - even the menu screen is dope as hell! Looking forward to the full version :D

Played the steam version of the game. What a charming little adventure! It really oozes character. Looking forward to the second part!

Haha your comment is a puzzle itself :D
So the implicit rule - and I might have not made that clear enough in the tutorial & rules section - is that pieces will murder the king if they are alone with him in one room. So since, as you've indicated, the king must have been alone with a piece in one room at time x, he couldn't have been murdered at a later time y.

You're not the only one that got confused by this, so I'll update the tutorial and rules section to make that more clear. Thanks for checking very closely!

Oh wow thank you for your wonderfully positive comment!! The daily puzzles might be exactly for you then :D Good that you've followed - you'll get a notification when this feature drops!

Hello Rawrkitteh, thank you for taking the time to play my game and report the bug. It is hard to reproduce but I've just pushed a fix that seems to have resolved it. In case it happens again or you notice some different issue don't hesitate to leave a comment. Have a great day!

Thank you so much for posting the very first video review! It great that you went in-depth and I've left my thougths underneath your video. Keep up the great work <3

First try :P Really evocative artstyle, intriguing push your luck mechanics. It's like the goth brother of Quacks of Quedlinburg :D

Love the creative concept! Artstyle is very evocative. I was really shocked by the brutal murder in the intro :D

I think the difficulty curve needs some work. In the middle section the enemies were hardly any challenge but the boss still beat my ass. And also I assume it gets way easier if you happen to have the cash for the second slot upgrade. 

Anyway - promising concept. Curious what you'll make out of it.

Hey Celia, thank you very much for your detailed feedback! In fact my next update will be a collection of small UI improvements. So feel free to follow the project since there is more stuff coming :D

Thank you very much! Also great that you've followed since there are more updates coming :D

Quite a lot of content for people that have always wanted to feel like Sauron. While the AI art is not my cup of tea, I think that the writing is quite decent. I like how characters are recurring after you've accepted them to your court. 

Thank you, glad to hear that you like the idea :D

As a matter of fact, I just released a new puzzle concept that should make the puzzles significantly harder, check it out! https://varzival.itch.io/chessboard/devlog/1506360/new-poison-puzzles

So you see, it's worth it to follow me and the project updates, lots of good stuff coming in the future!

And huge congrats for winning the price for best debut game!! I'm so happy for you :)

Thank you so much for taking the time to play and comment! I have a few more ideas cooking so keep an eye out for updates ;-)

All the best wishes for Tiny Bookshop and your other future endeavours!

Great to hear that you love the game!! Thank you so much for the encouragement.

My journey with Murder on the Chessboard is not over yet, stay tuned for harder challenges!

Thank you so much for playing my litte prototype <3 
Yes, higher difficulty puzzles are definitely on my list, some ideas:

- you also need to give alibis for the other pieces

- you don't know the last position and have to track from the front without knowing the king's final spot

- King is poisoned instead of knifed and moves after the murderer has struck

Stay tuned for more :D

Very nice!
It might make sense to add some kind of timer to the battles or more abilities that make the enemies stronger over time. As it stands, the battles tend to be a little lengthy and there is no reason not to drag it out and heal yourself to full each battle.

Simple and addictive game loop, charming artwork. Love it! For now it's a litte unoptimized and leads to stuttering graphics and sound but I'm sure you'll figure it out :D

My favourite one so far! The official one is a bit to plain and ManaDawn's is not a printer friendly. Good job, thank you for uploading!

Not quite sure how this Myth would work in play. It depends on the players encountering the same location over and over again. If they roam around it wouldn't make sense for them to encounter these omens. But this could be rewritten as a great hazard / obstacle along the knight's way

Love the mythology surrounding this Realm!

Cool, my knight rides the beetle steed. They should form a company! 

Insane amount of work went into this. It really leans into the Elden Ring feel of the game, which I like.

Maybe you could check out how to optimize the PDF through, it is 4 times as large as the whole rulebook so something can't be right here :D

Nice collection of ideas, I especially like the sites and ruins - will put some of them in my own campaign ;-)

You've really managed to capture the essence of Alec Sorensen's artwork and Chris McDowell's writing, amazing! 

Haha how awesome is that! Thank you for the quick delivery ;-)

Great idea that you've proposed in your article. By default, the omens lack a little bit of player agency, it could be fun if the players  had to chase them down rather than just randomly stumble upon them

Amazing tool. Love that you've added additional tables besides the ones given in the rulebook for fleshing out the realm

Awesome. I'm definitely going to use the rule that calculates how many warbands you can muster based on the territory you rule. "2 warbands per holding" as in the base rules is a little too vague for me

Love the concise rules summary at the bottom!

Love the concise rules summary at the bottom

Looking forward to some Mythic Bastionland content in your great blog! :D

Great artwork, love the choice of colors!