hi, its austin.

this last week has had jusentari & i brainstorming some finer details of the game. jumping off of last week's post, we spent some time implementing an "end-of-match" state for the game. once a checkmage! happens and you either win, lose, or draw, we were thinking it would be less jarring to both show the player the reason why you won/lost, and let the player check out the craziness of the board until they are satisfied.

to conserve space, we turn the end turn button into an end match button. it also looks kinda sleek!

with a game like chess, many problems arise with making stupid moves. with more wacky consequences comes more wacky mistakes. this is the pinnacle example:

on principle, the game should LET you do this with your king. your loss is your fault for not understanding the mechanics. but how else are you gonna learn without doing it first?

THE MOST AMAZING THING has been added to checkmage so far.
jusentari has been chipping away at the undo system, which lets players play with the chess environment like its a sandbox. it allows more carefree experimentation. you can learn what things do now with minimal consequence (as long as you dont put the enemy in check)

and still going through, fleshing out battles for the full game! trying to design every character to have some "wtf" type stuff they can pull out that just ups the ante every time is a cool challenge. my hope is that by the end of the game, the battles are less of chess matches and more indescribably unique anarchychess type stuff

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!

Bluesky - more updates, videos and sneak peeks