hi! its austin.

this week, i put in some curious features.

when playing longer matches and running out of cards/spells, mana starts to accumulate. the max it can reach is 10. with nothing to spend the mana on, this useless orb takes up part of your screen. it makes the player feel like there's something they weren't taking advantage of, like its some under-utilized resource. my original intent was for players to put higher-cost pieces in their deck as a backup to use this mana on, but recently i had a different idea.

now, when reaching 10 mana, you can choose to "unleash power", causing random things to happen to the board. the randomness ranges from casting spells on random pieces and tiles to granting you free-use cards and spells to your hand.

my hope is that this will bandage some of the staleness in the later rounds of a match and provide players with a mechanic that introduces chaos. id liken it to "tilting" a pinball machine. i don't want it to be too strong, and i want it to often hinder the player rather than help them in most situations. i will tweak this more as i playtest it to make sure it feels justified and truly random.

on the back-end, cedar has been re-writing the movement and capture code to allow for more unique move types like swapping pieces. one big benefit of this is that it now allows for more dynamic changes to movement.

one of the effects we've been able to implement from this is the "PRESSURE" debuff, that chokes the movement of pieces that move more than one space in any direction. as the boards increase in size, the value of far-reaching piece movement (rooks, queens) becomes greater, and enemies that can apply this debuff will provide an interesting challenge even in the late-game.

i also did some visuals and implementation for the stage hazard system. i think it looks pretty spiffy! i might change some of the animations, but i like how professional the side-bar looks.

i spend a lot of development time tweaking visuals back and forth, trying to find the most compelling color combinations and aesthetics. i always think that if i were to make this game without the restrictive color palette it would never have gotten this far, id still be choosing the colors for the main character.

below are the 4 options i gave myself. i want color-coded text that conveys its meaning visually. i went with yellow to signify its a stage hazard, plus the light blue for the name of the hazard to indicate that its a special, magical effect.

lastly, i reworked and put some polish into the shopkeeper and card trader systems. now, a full menu comes up for each of them with unique dialog and interactions.

the shopkeeper, who i've yet to name, will be a recurring salesman. his shop and sneeby's trades will be ways to obtain peculiar pieces that i cant find a home for in other character's decks.

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