Posted April 15, 2024 by Matt Ravenhall
#ludum-dare
Another Ludum Dare entry, this one being my first proper compo attempt (shorter deadline, more restrictions, one-person only).
The Idea
The theme this time was "Summoning", which wasn't exactly what I'd hope for. In fact, I almost skipped the jam because of it.
Ultimately I wanted to avoid any of the obvious uses of the themes (e.g. demon or creature summoning), and ended up with a strange combination of chess/checkers + summoning new pieces onto the board.
How It Went
Day 1
Most of the first day was really spent re-implementing draughts/checkers in Godot. This meant the basic board generation, unit selection and movement, and some of the quirks of the rules (e.g. pieces in checkers can attack multiple times in a row, men upgrade to kings which they reach the end of the board). At the end of day one, I had created a basic game - but it was just checkers. That said, the framework was perfectly built for the rapid integration of multiple pieces with different movements and attacks, there was just no actual summoning yet.
Day 2
The second day was essentially a case of "ok, now do everything else". This meant:
Thoughts On Submission
Right now I think Summoner's Chess probably has the right level of twist on the basic game. I just wish I'd had the time to allow teams to be customised and carried over between levels (to make the game feel more like a roguelike campaign than a mobile or Flash game).
Game balance is also something that is super hard to get right on a game jam, as this really comes out of play-testing. I based piece buy/summon prices off the weightings used in various chess engines, then made their sell/kill points about a fifth of the buy price. I also added a 250 point bonus for completing each level, as the first few levels have very few enemies. That said, adding checkers pieces into the mix will definitely change the value of different pieces and the checker piece costs were just made up.
I also have no idea if the rounds ramp up in difficulty too quickly or slowly. In the end, I create three basic tutorial levels, to allow players to build up points, then had a mid game of piece-focused round (e.g. a bunch of rooks/bishops etc.), and default checkers for level 8 and nothing vs. full chess for the final level. In the end, jumping into something like level 9 without earning points for a few rounds makes that level pretty tricky but a motivated player should be able to progress through all the levels in one go.
The Things That Didn't Quite Make It
Links