Checkmage!

Thank you for checking out the itch page for Checkmage! The prerelease demo is now available for playtesting. report bugs and feedback in the discord.
follow me on itch/bluesky for updates.

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WORDS:
This is a video game I am making! I've made a lot of them in the past, but this one is bigger. It has more stuff in it and that's a good thing, I think.

The game is a casual, free-form chess RPG with sandbox deck-building elements. Whatever that's supposed to mean! You battle fellow students by placing pieces and casting spells on a magical floating chess board, and by moving one piece on the board per turn. The goal is to checkmate or capture the enemy king in a variety of peculiar situations.

It takes place in a universe where wizardry and spell-casting is so blasé, even the most scholarly of wizard students turn to distractions—such as Checkmage!—to entertain themselves.

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NUMBERS:
20+ thoughtfully-designed furry characters with unique battles, themes, dialog, reactions, and personalities! You can rematch them and see their strategies and loadouts improve.

100+ unique pieces, tiles, and spells to collect and experiment with! I've designed a lot of the elements in this game from intrusive "what-if" thoughts that have surprisingly deep interactions. Emergent gameplay!

6 carefully crafted locations! I'm not gonna lie, this one isn't that interesting, but it took a lot longer to draw the pixel art for the areas than I had expected. It's a bullet point. This is like objectification, but for video games.

There's also a gauntlet area which has you battle randomly generated enemies, and a dungeon that gives you a rogue-like challenge.