Chain Chess

FREE and playable on mobile devices!

What if you could use the pieces you've captured?
Chain Chess explores this concept in a rogue-lite fashion, progressing through procedurally generated rooms by capturing pieces and adding them to your move chain. Each room aims to test your ability to plan ahead. Pick up cryptic artefacts along your way to aid your progression.

Can you beat the game? Clear 20 rooms to win!

Controls:

Mouse/touchscreen.

IMPORTANT:
There is a soft-lock when playing as the Bishop and all enemy pieces are Bishops on the opposite-coloured tile. You can't progress as it's impossible to capture an enemy (and for an enemy to capture you). I'm currently working on a solution to this but if this happens then you will have to start a new run.

IMPORTANT 2:
Chain Chess is a work in progress and thus you may find bugs and/or other soft-locks while playing. If so, please don't hesitate to message me or post a comment below. It really helps make the game better if I know that something needs fixing.
I hope this also excuses my programmer art...

Not that important:
- Ignore the 'Base multiplier' text in the run info. That is related to the upgrade system which has been taken out in the most recent update
- The 'one turn clear' amount is not correct. Working on a fix...

Enjoy!

UPDATE 5 (sound effects):

Coming soon...

UPDATE 4:

Added:
- Invincibility. This is still early days, but at the moment the game applies it automatically when the player enters the next room. This helps fix a soft locking issue in previous versions where the player could move into the line of sight of an enemy. The invincibility is removed once the player starts their second turn.

- UI visual overhaul.

- Settings, including the option to double tap before moving.

Changed:
- When the player is attacked by an enemy, they lose a life straight away and continue playing. Once the player hits 0 lives, it is game over.

Removed:
- Leaderboard. Reason: Wasn't being used in playtesting. Also by removing it the game is fully playable offline.

- Upgrade system. Reason: Became too much of a distraction from the core gameplay.

- Puzzles. These are removed temporarily while I work on designing more puzzles.

- 'Endless mode' concept. This has been temporarily removed because play-testers usually stopped playing after the 20th room. So now when the player reaches room 20 they beat the game.

UPDATE 3:
This update re-designs the game's core progression system. The timer is gone! And has been replaced with 6 lives. Get captured, lose a life.
Why remove the timer? As the player reaches later rooms, the game gets significantly more challenging. With the timer forever ticking down, it seemed unfair to make players rush their decisions and then subsequently get punished with a time penalty. I experimented with various forms of the timer, as well as being more relaxed with when the timer is/isn't running, but these all still lead to the same issue mentioned. Like magic, the removal of the timer instantly centralised the player's attention on the movement of their pieces on the board, allowing them to plan out where to move given the pieces in their chain.
To add to this new system, the player has an XP bar which they use to level up. Capturing a piece adds XP, and consecutive capture increases the multiplier to gain even more. When the player levels up, they choose an upgrade. This could give the player a higher base multiplier, or they gain more XP after capturing a piece, OR...sometimes, the player has the choice of an Artefact. Inspired by the relics in Slay the Spire, they give the player a cool new ability. The player can only hold on to three at a time, however, and can remove one by selling it for XP.

Another big addition: The Leaderboard. Players are scored based on the furthest room entered. It also shows the seed used, so anyone looking to overtake a player can copy their seed and use it in their next run.

Now with the addition of an endless mode, the game demanded a flavour of variety. After clearing 10 levels, you may notice the enemies look slightly different...that's because they are! Alongside the regular enemies, we now have Glitched, Aggressive and Chained enemies.
Glitched: Will change its piece type after it has moved.
Aggressive: Will capture you if you are in its line of sight, regardless of whether you have any moves remaining in your chain (note: there is a rare error with this enemy where it won't capture you: I am working to patch this asap).
Chained: See for yourself ;)

There are other new tweaks to the game that returning players may notice, but I'll keep those a secret and let you find them :) Speak again in the next update!

UPDATE 2:
Chain Chess has been featured on the VimJam 5 showcase!

UPDATE 1:

Thank you to everyone who has recently played Chain Chess! The support has been overwhelming and it means so much that so many of you have had fun playing. We now have our first update to the game, with pawn promotion, improved UI, puzzles, a full-screen option (I hear you Vimlark), and most importantly, endless mode.

Credits:

Edges of tile map: OSH QRD Studio https://oshq.itch.io/tilemap-sf

Chess piece sprites: WildLife Studios https://wildlifestudios.itch.io/chess-set-pixel-art

UI button images: Crusenho https://crusenho.itch.io/complete-ui-essential-pack

Piece move SFX:
UberBosser https://freesound.org/s/421585/

game over SFX:
Leszek_Szary https://freesound.org/s/146731/

Level up SFX:
Kenneth_Cooney https://freesound.org/s/609335/

Text effect: Febucci https://docs.febucci.com/text-animator-unity

Made for VimJam 5, with a jam focus on 'Racing' and an (optional) theme of 'Escape'.