Game play was very fun, definitely felt the hype. One suggestion would be to make the AI adaptive because I destroyed it on my first try. Great job overall!
Nailed the style. Great atmosphere. Controls are smooth and intuitive, UI is clean and helpful. Just the right balance between lack of instruction and helpful nudges. I immediately felt challenged by the problem in front of me but not overwhelmed. It seems like you had a strong sense for what you wanted the player to experience and how to accomplish that.
Nice concept! It was fun experimenting with different combinations of equipment. I also love the effort put into the story. It really gave character some depth that I wasn’t expecting from a game jam.
Apologies the controls weren’t clear. Holding shift and hovering over a piece will cause arrows to appear. From there you can click and drag to scale in the direction of the arrow. See attached gif
I’ll add this to the game description as well so it hopefully helps others in the short term.
Glad you enjoyed the concept and had some fun despite all the bugs! We were really hoping to have a basic chess bot which required being able to detect when a player is in check, but as we ran out of time I agree that it may have been wiser to leave that out. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the feedback. We were definitely piggy-backing off a well-established game, but the addition of scale does have many subtle and interesting implications on game play that we wanted to explore. Just to name a few:
Scaling allows you to capture multiple pieces at once, which is not possible in vanilla chess
Being bigger is a double-edged sword. You can capture more pieces but are also an easier target and can’t fit through tight passages.
Some endgames that ordinarily result in stalemates in vanilla chess (e.g., king & lone bishop vs lone king) can be converted into checkmates with scaling pieces
Pawns can effectively move sideways and backwards via scaling, both of which are impossible in vanilla chess.
Likewise, bishops can change square colors via this technique. In vanilla chess, bishops are confined to a single color square the entire game.
Thanks! We went with a chess variant to “scope small” not fully realizing how complex chess programming is. Hence all the bugs we didn’t have time to iron out :)
Love the take on the theme and imaginative story. I don’t have anything to add beyond what @Lost Gremlin said, but you deserved another positive comment for your awesome work!
What an ambitious game jam project, and you knocked it out of the park! One potential area of improvement: recreating the scale model from the drawing is a bit tedious without measurements handy and having to carefully count the pixels. Genuinely a very fun game idea though.
The whole experience feels very polished. Wonderful art and sound design with nice, straightforward gameplay.
My only suggestion is to consider making the arrows easier to distinguish when you have to learn the pattern so quickly. Some visual and or pitch variation would help a lot.
Thanks for the suggestion! Another thing we had considered but didn’t have time for was being able to partially reset the level back to the last added piece, or perhaps some number of items back in time. We’ll keep the soft body physics idea in mind if we flesh it out more.
