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ChIA - Chess Intelligence Agency's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #5 | 4.391 | 4.391 |
| Overall | #9 | 4.043 | 4.043 |
| Visuals | #10 | 4.130 | 4.130 |
| Fun | #10 | 3.870 | 3.870 |
| xkcd-ness (how well it matches/interprets the comic) | #26 | 4.130 | 4.130 |
| Audio | #34 | 2.696 | 2.696 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Link to xkcd comic / 'what if' article the game is based on
https://xkcd.com/839/
Please list any pre-made art/music/other assets that you used.
None, all made from scratch.
Team size
1
Team's social media links:
http://jirihysek.cz
Anything else you want players to know before they play?
Have fun!
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Comments
Very nice job!
Was a tiny bit disappointed by the cheaty pawns in the beginning but all in all very enjoyable experience. I don't want to admit how long I was stuck in that first knight bit but got through it in the end and the rest was a breeze compared to it. Maybe making the ground have white and black squares would have helped my poor brain out in that part.
Visuals very pretty much spot on. Of course, always could need more effects but they got the job done. Did you run out of time and not get a chance to add that nice breathing animation for the knight and the bishop or just completely forget it? It was a nice little touch. It's often overlooked how much having even such a simple stretch and squash can do. The text scroll speed was too slow in my opinion...
I'm glad you like it despite it's not as finished and polished as I wanted.
The "idle" animation was on the todo list. But I thought no one will notice it anyway so it has low priority. As you pointed out there are more important features that remain unfinished.. Even it's a 72 hours jam, I worked on it only from saturday evening to sunday night (including sleeping of course). So I didn't make it. I found interesting the mechanism of promotions which changes movement rules during the game. Therefore I decided to implement this. Unfortunately it was at the expense of other game mechanics.
Anyway I was quite satisfied with what I managed to finish in given time. It was great experience (i was my first game jam) and lot of fun! :)
Cool, cool. Interested to see what you can cook up in some future jams!
I must say that I'm not a fan of chess, but taking the movement rules and making it a puzzle game was a great idea. The background story complements the gameplay very well. On to some nitpicks: the 10 second timer didn't really affect the gameplay at the end which was strange. As the knight was much more challenging to navigate compared to the bishop, it might have made more sense to put that later. Some ideas for extending the game further: additional challenge could come from enemy pieces that would attack you if you land in the wrong spot (but that would make it more of a roguelike). All in all a great entry!
Yeah, you are right about the timer. I just needed to add some kind of game ending. There is an explosion animation and after that the Deep Blue is gone. Since picking timer is a precondition to reach the end I added 10s timeout to show the timer was useful for something.. Could be better but I was running out of time and this ending is probably better than no ending.
About enemies - I was actually thinking about add some pawn guards which won't let the pawn pass. And our pawn could jump diagonally over one of them as in chess. It could bring more different puzzle situations.
Thank you for feedback!
Great entry into the jam. I hope you'll extend on it. Some thoughts: I agree with Djack that hopping walls isn't really appropriate for the bishop. It fits the knight, but bishops usually can't jump over things. Instead you could extend the turner-things idea, as Naomi suggested. For the bishop you could instead introduce shifter plates, that move the bishop one field horizontally or vertically, so that he can access the other diagonal.
Thanks for your feedback! To be honest I haven't play chess for a long time and I didn't realize that bishop cannot jump over other figures. Now I see it is confusing. My bad...
Bishop's part is made in hurry. I just wanted to have more than one promotion in the jam version.. maybe the knights part would be enough for the jam entry. And if the bishop wouldn't jump over the wall, without introducing another mechanics like shifter plates you talked about (good idea btw.), this part would be absolutely straightforward.
Anyway, all feedback is really appreciated and I will definitely use it in extended version in the future.
Thanks a lot!
Really interesting.
Those mechanics could really be extended upon!
I was confused about the fact that you could jump above gaps and walls as the bishop.
Thank you for your feedback! As I replied above, I didn't realize that bishop cannot jump over other figures, I'v played chess long time ago.. my bad :(
This is a really neat game! I love the tactical chess elements; it's a nice challenge to try and figure out how to move effectively. And the fact that you made all the assets is incredible; the game looks and feels amazingly polished for such a short amount of time.
I do have a few complaints, though. Mainly that the player who doesn't play chess will likely have trouble with this. Maybe not so much with the pawn, but definitely with the knight. It would be great to have a popup or dialogue box that explains the moveset of each new chess piece. (Speaking of the dialogue, there were a few minor typos and grammar mistakes in the writing.)
And I do love the turner-things that you introduce at the beginning; it's a legitimately interesting mechanic to turn the piece into new ways to move. But you never bring it back anywhere else in the game, and none of the other pieces you use really need it.
Finally, the knight section is a real challenge. It took quite a while for me to figure out that I could hop over walls, and a bit longer to finally hop to the exit. It's a very closed space and the most challenging level in the game.
I really enjoyed this one. Nice job on it. :)
Thank you for helpful feedback! I'm glad you like it :)
You're absolutely right about the turner-things. I was thinking about it during development. Those turner-things make sense only with pawns and I originally intended to give pawn more space.. There should be more puzzles and more mechanics (at least changing position by capturing another pawn). But I found the knight's part more interesting, so because of limited time I decided to show pawn only shortly and give more space to the knight... Too much ideas for game jam :)
I agree that showing allowed moves would be helpful. If I make an extended version some day I would definitely have it in mind.
Cleverly done. Really enjoyed that. I don't have anything more constructive to say, but I did really enjoy it.
Thanks a lot!
This is a really great concept of using know board game rules and turning it into a puzzle game. The graphics were great the dialogue clever the only thing missing was sound. It is still one of my favorite games from this jam so far! Anyway one thing I do want to mention is I'm doing a review of design on the games in this jam so here's a shameless plug to my channel if you want to be notified of the vid when released: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Vj46GGL9VMUvd4YTMtjXg
My XKCD game jam analysis is out!
Well done! And thanks for mentioning my game in the video :)