hey, its austin. i'm gonna start doing a weekly devlog leading up to the release of Checkmage!.

ive been adding some cool stuff to the game this past week and getting a lot of the long-form content worked out.

i added a new secret area i'd been planning, a well that springs up out of nowhere halfway through the game. 

its a pretty small area but its just a sort of boss-rush thing where you fight a bunch of random battles with a character named the wellkeeper (or wilfre). he keeps track of how many battles you're able to complete in a row, and if you beat 5 or 6 you get a badge and "complete" the stage.

    

his sprite and name is a reference to the main antagonist of drawn to life, a game i had played as a kid. the spritework in the game was very lively and serves as a small inspiration for my pixel art.

some experimenting with different randomized board sizes & pieces for the wellkeeper's battles:

some more spritework for a new volcano tower & lava tile. i had the old sprite kicking around in the game files for a while, and its a core mechanic for one of the main 20 characters' battles so i decided to finish drawing the sprites

every other turn, the volcano tower will erupt and turn two random unoccupied tiles into lava tiles, which will serve as temporary hazards that cool down by 1 level every turn. while hot, the tiles are effectively disabled for 4 turns. 
pieces that levitate or have an effect that makes them resistant to lava will not be destroyed when moving onto these tiles.



also lots of secret work on the ending...

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