hi, its austin.

this last week ive worked on implementing a few spells and pieces, as well as building the strategies that will be used by opponents in the mid-game and late-game.

the volcano piece from a previous blogpost is now implemented, along with the lava tiles it creates. the animation might change later to be more unique.

a sacrifice spell has been added, allowing you to destroy a piece of your color and gain twice its mana cost. the spell is free, meaning it only costs the space it takes up in your (fairly limited) deck.

the "phasing" effect and enchantment card has been added also. it allows a piece that would otherwise be blocked to phase right through pieces of its own color. i intend this to be used with melvin when you fight him for the second time, because his traps often get in the way of his own pieces.

i also asked another friend to do another playtesting session the other day, which gave me some pretty useful information about balance.

the first demo was kind of a cake-walk for people with general chess and video game knowledge. the same person who had an easy time with the first demo experienced a lot of difficulty and frustration with the strength of the re-worked opponents. with this next set of playtests, i think can strike a good middle ground while keeping the opponents feeling like they're genuinely trying to beat you, instead of just being a mindless video game obstacle.

the knobs i can turn to make an opponent stronger or weaker: change their initial board layout, change their initial pieces, change their spell-casting priority (will they cast spells intelligently?), changing the number of high value cards in their deck.

and also lots of unintended behavior and glitches to be discovered and fixed

Checkmage! is still in active development. If you want to support me, please consider sharing with friends. The game will be released on Steam and Itch for sale when I'm done making it.

Checkmage! on steam  - wishlist now!

Bluesky - more updates, videos and sneak peeks