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A jam submission

It takes 3 to play chessView game page

Three player Chess on a hyperbolic chessboard with easy AI
Submitted by Voidsay — 6 hours, 52 minutes before the deadline
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It takes 3 to play chess's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creative use of art assets#963.7203.720
Overall#3682.8402.840
Overall polish#4652.4402.440
Engagement#5432.3602.360

Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

Why make 3 player chess in 3D where you play with some weird looking guys while listening to some creepy music? I feel confused.

Why that guy has a chest instead of his head? Is that a mimic by any chance?

What is the goal? Win the chess game cuz you bet your life on it? Have fun with your creepy friends? I just don't get it.

You also didn't code any rules on how pieces move, so I literally can win the game of chess in two turns.

Developer

Why not? Or in more words: "Just because I can". It's more of an artsy game and they tend to get weird and confusing.

If you squint you might notice that the chest looks like a helmet.

No goal. You make your own fun. You make your own story. Best enjoyed with friends or wait until I bother to make a working AI.

Normal chess is easy to make. Heck there are dozens of libraries for all major programming languages that do all the work for you. This is not normal chess and my small brain only found solutions that take a lot of manual work to implement. Too long for a jam as it turned out, so there are only the most necessary things in the build.

Submitted

Love the games idea and the execution! I wold have loved to play against different ai's but you really pulled it off!

Submitted(+1)

I really like the atmosphere you managed to put together from the tileset! The ability to look around was nice for that, though I found the controls for doing so very finicky and I usually preferred actually playing in the top-down mode.

Without rules enforcement or competent AI, the single-player gameplay is basically meaningless; if you want to win on your second turn you can, otherwise all you can do is hope the AI doesn't decide to move onto your king. In multiplayer it's probably more reasonable; real-life chess doesn't really have rules enforcement either after all. I think it could have been better to lean more on that and allow more manual control so players would be able to make advanced moves like castling and en passant as well as undoing moves if all the players agree on it or custom rules and board setups.

Developer(+1)

The intention was always to make an AI you can verse. I don't think making a multiplayer game for a jam is a good idea, since it actually requires several people (in this case 3) to be available at the same time (plus there are only 700 of you guys in this jam). I want everyone to be able to explore the full game, so in my mind an AI is always mandatory.

The real problem that I faced (aka why the house collapsed) is the fact that I didn't plan with the fields being such a pain to make. The actual collision detection to field conversion was tough on its own, but then the actual problem crushed me. You can't just put 'em in a neat 2d array (or a 3d or 4d array for that matter), because the space is overlapping. Basically I ended up with all field stored in a 1d array and no relation to each other. Can't make rules when you don't have info on the fields.

One might argue to make simpler games (to win or impress all the people), but I participate to push myself and learn new stuff. It usually fails, but as someone said "experience is just a fancy name for failure" and I am all about this.

I am writing way too much again. TLDR thank you for your feedback, I am working on improving.

Submitted(+1)

I like the idea of putting the three way chess in a 3d room with sprites as opponents. The use of the artkit and the atmosphere in the room are wonderful.

It is unfortunate, that the rules are not enforced. I guess nobody expects an AI from a game jam, but checking for the rules would have been nice. Also the look around with the mouse feels mirrored to my expections, but maybe thats just me.

Overall very polished visuals and creative use of assets.

Developer

Well the ting is that the AI heavily relies on the rule check. If I would have managed to map out the fields a decent AI would have followed in 30 minutes.

You are correct regarding the mouse controls. I should have implemented a "reverse mouse" checkbox in the options. I tend to forget all the little quality of life improvements even though they are super quick to implement.

Ship the MVP now, patch it later, we're a live service now :)

Submitted

I have a chessboard like that myself. It is always fun to play.

Developer

Hope I wasen't too far of with the rules then.

Submitted

That is a great use of the assets, and the atmosphere is great, but the game isn't that original. I've seen other multiple player chess games and some that didn't let you put a piece anywhere.

But well, for a jam it's very nice, and I certainly wouldn't be able to do something like that, nice!

Developer(+1)

I didn't claim that I invented this. I am not ready to innovate yet, just practicing with the classics.

Submitted

The idea is good and the use of asset is good also!

Submitted(+1)

The idea is great. Not new but still a interesting thing. The atmosphere is good. Unfortunately it is not finished and still quite buggy but the concept is good. I hope you will finish this! :)

Developer

I saw a meme with it that week and while browsing the asset pack and deciding whether to participate or not the chess pieces caught my eye. I couldn't pass on that opportunity. Overestimating my ability as I usually do.

Probably won't finish any time soon, since rl takes priority, but maybe I will find some time to practice and try different approaches.

Submitted(+1)

Really cool concept and visuals! I love how you used the chest sprite as a face.

I can move the pieces wherever I want tho, is that intended?

Developer

No, but I didn't have enough time to lock invalid moves.

Submitted(+1)

Love the visuals! The settings and execution is superb!

Suggestions wise, as I am not an avid chess player, was hoping to have visuals on where I can place my pieces for my next move. After selecting a piece, I can't release it as well. I also found the camera movements to be a little too sensitive.

Developer

Thank you.

I would definitely make it more user friendly. Unfortunately I got stuck on the chessboard mapping (calculating which tiles a piece can move to), so the highlighting feature and a competent AI were impossible to make.

Oh no I forgot to make an adjustable mouse sensitivity! All these poor poor fps players with their high dpi mouses will be suffering! And it is an easy feature to make on top of that...

(+1)

Nice.

Programming the entirety of 3-player Chess and an AI was unlikely for a game Jam; but you got the key components down to play against their friends. Considering this runs in-browser; I may actually return to this game in the future to play 3-player chess with my friends.

Great concept and execution, great visuals.

Slightly dizzying when the camera turns around the board; and the beeps in the intro came out very loud. Still; I really like this.

Developer

One day I will defeat high dimension and non euclidean space! Then no one will be able to stop me! MUHAHAHA...

Yeah don't look into the middle of the board while it rotates. First I thought it bent weirdly because I was sleep deprived, but I guess it has more to do with me looking at this rotating board for many minutes. Best to look at the opponents or something else in the background.

Baroque music is loud and I am still new to sound balancing. I will pay more attention to that in the future.

Submitted(+1)

I really like the visuals and the atmosphere!

Submitted(+1)

I like the concept but it seems like you can move all the pieces pretty much wherever you want except for where your own pieces are, so I was a bit confused since I thought it followed the standard rules of chess. I was able to just take the other kings from the very beginning--just two moves haha

Developer(+1)

You are correct. Unfortunately I failed to map the moves each piece can make onto the board, which also resulted in the terrible AI.

At least you can now say you won three player chess in two moves. That counts for something?

Submitted

Cool visuals, interesting concept, doesn't quite work as expected though.