Checkmage!

Thank you for checking out the itch page for Checkmage! The next prerelease demo is available for playtesting now!

please report bugs and talk with others about your experience in the discord server!
follow me on itch/bluesky for updates.

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WORDS:
This is a video game I am making! I've made a lot of them in the past, but this one is bigger. It has more stuff in it and that's a good thing, I think.

The game is a casual, free-form chess RPG with sandbox deck-building elements. Whatever that's supposed to mean! You battle fellow students by placing pieces and casting spells on a magical floating chess board, and by moving one piece on the board per turn. The goal is to checkmate or capture the enemy king in a variety of peculiar situations.

It takes place in a universe where wizardry and spell-casting is so blasé, even the most scholarly of wizard students turn to distractions—such as Checkmage!—to entertain themselves.

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NUMBERS:
20+ thoughtfully-designed furry characters with unique battles, themes, dialog, reactions, and personalities! You can rematch them and see their strategies and loadouts improve.

100+ unique pieces, tiles, and spells to collect and experiment with! I've designed a lot of the elements in this game from intrusive "what-if" thoughts that have surprisingly deep interactions. Emergent gameplay!

6 carefully crafted locations! I'm not gonna lie, this one isn't that interesting, but it took a lot longer to draw the pixel art for the areas than I had expected. It's a bullet point. This is like objectification, but for video games.

There's also a gauntlet area which has you battle randomly generated enemies, and a dungeon that gives you a rogue-like challenge.