Finally played almost 2 years later!

I like the chill mood and retake on chess.

My main issue was that outside Pawns, the AI is rather good meaning it won’t go onto squares I threaten… which also means it’s hard to destroy all the enemy units (it’s not that easy to force a certain unit into dying by threatening its current and all its future possible positions, except slow units like the King, and pawns, esp. on a board that’s mostly empty). Fortunately the AI did a mistake, but it’s a bit hard to tell how long it will take to do so. If the enemy side also had some “king” I suppose it could be faster. But it’s also funnier to just eat all the enemy units.

After doing a stupid mistake I restarted the game, but this time the first level has a full row of pawns to fight! It was too long to kill them all (and the animations are slow and unskippable, which wasn’t an issue on my first run as I kept thinking, but against an army of pawns it’s not really interesting), so I gave up.

Otherwise I like the ability to pick new units… it seems you should get the high stars, but pawns are also useful to cover their own range. Plus high stars are limited in later game due to limited slots.

Maybe you took part to later Magical Girl Game Jams too? I should check the 2023 entries as well!

Clever game. I liked the varied magical girl designs and movement patterns. I think assigning star limits to different spaces is an inspired move. The AI seemed to be decently smart, they wouldn't just freely walk into squares I was threatening. Animations moved too slow for my liking and the game was a little too easy from what I played of it (only a few levels). Would definitely like to see this expanded on.

This is a really cool gameplay concept! I had a lot of fun with the chess style battles, and it was challenging without being frustrating. I managed to complete the game in one try, and had a blast doing it!

The audio all worked well. The art style is clean and looks good, though maybe a little more color or flourish to the game-board environment could improve it a bit. I did like the large variety of colorful ally sprites, those looked great!

I did find a UI bug during my game... I guess this comes from my own OCD testing of my games, but I went into QA mode for a second... after each stage, when you get to select a new ally, I suddenly thought to myself, what happens if I try to click more than one while they are sliding off the screen? Turns out I can keep clicking them over and over, getting all options and as many duplicates as I'd like. The character select screen isn't built to hold this many, so they start to go under other UI items and eventually fall off the screen.

Ultimately, this bug didn't break the game, nor did it give me any huge advantage. I basically just used the pieces I would have chosen without any bug exploiting.

Anyway, really nice work! One of the most fun games in the jam that I've played.

Fantastic game. I like how it combines chess with rouge-lite in an Autochess-like fashion. The animation is very nice, though it is a bit long if you are replaying it over and over again, so I'd like to see an option for faster animation or even skip animation.

Maybe at some point you could prevent the user from putting themselves into check/checkmate.

Some points about balance: I managed to start a session of with two enemy queens vs my king and princess. Not sure if that is beatable. Also I feel like the original chess pieces just feel very valuable at their tier with the exception of the pawn. Because reaching the other end of the board gives you an essentially dead character.

Very nice game, really liked the custom piece rules and quite cute sprites and ran smoothly for me! As for suggestions, art-wise I think it would've been better if the other side uses pallete swaps of your pieces/characters, in particular since chess is supposed to be symmetric, also makes it easier to tell what the other side can do. Plus a bit more of story would've been nice, not asking anything too special but something like a few dialogue lines between the sisters between levels would've been cool, or maybe when you pick a new piece they say something to present themselves. Still enjoyed it quite a lot!

Also see some other people complaining about the AI, but considering the limited time and the use of custom chess rules and that the unit composition is always changing, I think you really did a great job with your AI. Many strategy games just make the AI blindly charge at you, but here sometimes the other pieces actually tried to maneuver around and aim at sniping the king sister, which is better than most others similar games I've tried.

i like it! good concept,  it was fun and engaging. The only downside is that my unit get taken down and the game get stuck

One of my pieces got taken and it froze the game. I played on browser.

I only played a game and a half, but damn it was pretty good. I like the idea of adding new pieces each time. Lots of fun. Very impressed at how much work you did too.

I love this game.

Like for real you just made me remind when I as a smol kiddo used to make these new "characters" for chess. 

Animations aren't slow, they are good for strategic game.

Anyways, graphics, animation and even AI (which was propably really hard) are all truly great and made me suprise.

I also love that you can choose your teammates. Mana system also is great cuz it makes you add even the pawns, jesters and other worse stuff.

The only problem is that game freezes easily, but I think it's understandable.

Thank you for this piece of art, Good job!

I liked the whole magical girl themed chess concept, and the character designs. I also like how you've got many different characters/pieces, which adds a bit of replay value to the game.

The animations may be a bit slow for some, but for what it's worth, I like how each of the pieces have their own unique animation.

Just one issue though. Clicking "Exit game" from the main menu causes the game to freeze. Tried with both the browser playable version and downloaded from the itch client. Perhaps the "exit game" can be removed if it's meant to be browser playable?

Overall a great game.

I love the concept of this game. It's magical girls and chess and turn based tactics, it's classic genres with new twists. Maybe it's been done before, but this is the first time I've run across it, and I had a ton of fun playing with the new pieces and mechanics.

I love the mechanics of unlocking and choosing pieces to build a team, too. The UI is pretty buggy and/or unintuitive, though, and it took me forever to figure out how to remove pieces or realize at all that you could have more than one of each piece. I wish the way mana worked was a bit better explained, too. And I'm still not sure if moving the starting pieces is even possible.

The biggest gameplay flaw is the inconsistent AI. Sometimes it plays perfectly, sometimes it runs headfirst into a brick wall. Neither of those things are great in the first place, and together they create an experience with really inconsistent difficulty. It's not a deal breaker, but this area could definitely be improved.

The difficulty ramp in terms of opponent pieces and placement was kind of all over the place. I had a very easy level after a challenging one, and I also had the same enemies twice in a row. I've heard it might be randomized, but I only played the game once. Maybe the weighting could be better.

I was having a lot of fun, almost had made it, and then...

I made a stupid mistake and my king got eaten. I hit restart... and the game kicked me into a level with six high-level enemies and only my starting magical girls. I wasn't sure if that was a glitch or deliberate; it felt grossly unfair to the point where I kinda lost all enthusiasm for the game and called it a day at that point. I had no idea the game was permadeath. I'm not a fan of that in general, and I really think that if this game has to have it, it should definitely have a check mechanic like chess normally does.

I think some people will complain about the slow pacing, but to be honest, for a game like this it works. The pixel art is great and the unique animations for each piece just give it that much more panache.

If there's one nitpick it's that I wish the info panel showed the enemy piece instead of the magical girl version of the piece when showing where each one can move.

The theme implementation is solid enough, although it's kinda the obvious one to go with in retrospect.

All in all I liked this entry a lot, and I feel it's one of the strongest of the ones I've looked at so far. I just really was bummed out by being unexpectedly kicked back to zero, and there are a few minor aspects that could be improved upon.

I like that the chess mechanic makes it easy to pick up. And then the randomness and customization gives the game more depth and unpredictability. It's a game that I feel it's joyful to play more than one run. the graphic is cute and "indie". 

i feel it will be more exciting if the animation is much faster. but probably it's because i like playing fast game.

Good job anyway

I like the concept I'm a big fan of rogue-lites and chess so this was really cool to see! I thought the art and character designs were cool and I liked the star limit mechanic. The only thing is we got stuck in a stalemate in one level and there wasn't a way to restart the game so we had to refresh the page. Overall, very fun :D