hi, its austin.

strikes are going away.

ive done a lot of thinking with jusentari on the games identity, now that its been played and tested by a good number of people. i found that the 3-strikes check-break system doesn't lead to any meaningful strategy. it's more confusing and intrusive than it needs to be. most people weren't sure what it meant when "checkbreak" happened, and what meaningful difference skipping your or your opponents turn had. its function also led to less cathartic and less rewarding wins, letting the player directly capture the enemy king which felt like strange, buggy  behavior.

why did i ever implement strikes and checkbreak in the first place?

in the earliest iteration of the game, back when it was just more of a visual art piece (and when i was enamored with balatro's hypnotic retro crt filter & floaty visuals), i had a button that you could press to expand the board and examine each piece and tile individually.

i got rid of it at some point because why wouldnt you just be allowed to inspect each piece at any time? why did the board need to scale out like that? it looked cool but didnt have a useful purpose. it worked only as an art piece.

the checkbreak was originally brainstormed as a way for me to shoehorn in the dynamic visuals for the board.

the left is the way the board looks prior to checkbreak, and the right is after. i thought it was cool having the stakes get higher as your strikes are depleted. but in practice, checkbreak fails to increase the intensity of the match.

i think the final hope the dynamic visuals have is to be active when the game is in a "game over" state.

instead of quitting out of the match instantly upon loss/win, im thinking of having a "soft" end to the match, where you get to inspect the board one last time before clicking "END MATCH", the button that replaces "END TURN", and giving the player an undo button for moves made on their turn.

i think this does 2 good things: 

reduces confusion around the climactic part of the match. this makes it feel more deserved and fair* when you win or lose.

it also allows for the player to potentially perform and undo moves that are less about the player being out-witted by the enemy, and more that the player didn't know capturing a fanatic would make them lose.

this is a design problem ive been butting up against, here's a snippit of me talking about it in the discord:

"ive also been talking with @jusentari about what should and should not cause check, and what should and should not be considered a legal move. right now it's very wishy-washy in game but soon we'll make it a lot more clear with solid rules

posshydra — 9/9/2025 1:57 PM

i think our consensus is this:

CHECK! will be triggered any time the enemy does anything that puts you in check, but ONLY on their turn. this means that if you change states between turns (ex. a conveyor pushes your king into check) it will not skip the enemy's turn, because the enemy hasn't done anything. (this will be the case for both you and the enemy, right now it's a little lopsided)

a legal move will be simply any move that doesn't immediately put you into check in the standard rules of chess. this will result in a kind of drastic overhaul, but i think it will make the game better thematically.

for example, right now you can't capture a fanatic or a trap piece. it makes logical sense because the game checks to see if the next move you make will end up with you losing, and capturing the piece in either case will cause you to lose your king.

however, it's more fun and i think in the spirit of the game to allow you to make decisions that cause you to instantly lose. you should be allowed to experience firsthand why capturing the fanatic and turning your king black results in a loss. it is a revelatory "oh, duh!" moment that conveys the consequences visually, instead of coldly denying your move because the computer knows better.

with that overhaul of legal moves, its only fair to put in an undo button that appears when you have yet to end your turn. we'll wait to add this change to the demo until we get all these things implemented"

anyways, heres the retrieve spell, i think its simple, self-explanatory, fits in nicely and im proud of the pixel art.

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  - play the demo now!

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