Great game! Could have used a better tutorial though. I was pretty confused.

Lovely graphics and concept! Is there a way to move the pawn past the bridge to help with the queen at the end?

Cute game! Did encounter a bug as I was figuring out the bridge puzzle tho, had to restart. Placed a boulder on the far end of it (I was trying to set it in the bridge to close the gap) and the rook couldn't pick it back up when I later discovered that I needed wood for it.

The dialog is a nice touch, the beginning was a bit confusing though, think there's room for improving the player's (and by extension, Pip's) context to start with. What was the deal with the knight who charged ahead with Pip? And that's the same Knight you party up with later right?

When I beat the game and it immediately restarted to the beginning I assumed there was going to be some narrative twist on 'New Game+', to tie in with the Theme. But no it just restarted. An end screen with a 'Thanks For Playing' message or the like could've spared me that (perhaps unfair) assumption. That said I don't think this game ties strongly into the theme of the jam, I can get what you were going for but I think there needed to a bit more narrative set up to establish a status quo loop for Pip to break out of.

@happygamer500 Thanks! Yeah, it's especially overwhelming at the beginning.

@cyborg-studio Thank you! Yep, you have to repair the bridge to get the pawn across. Have your rook move up and speak to the townspeople in the next board.

@j-loy Thanks for your detailed feedback, that's really helpful. I didn't have a great deal of time to playtest with anyone, so there'll definitely be a lot of those game-stopping bugs and situations you can get yourself into. There is a restart key (R) that keeps your progress by board, but in my sleepy state last night I forgot to add controls to the description.
The lack of any change after the end is a pretty big oversight for this kind of game (and the theme), so thanks for pointing that out. I'm sorry it was a bit of a time waster - I would've also assumed something would change for my next playthrough. I definitely would've like to spend more time on the context, story and loop theme to try and make this all make a bit more sense. Next time!

Very interesting concept, and well executed!

The mix between story and chess puzzle feels good.
The art looks good, too bad there is no music or sounds.

There were a few bugs, such as white pawns after the village becoming invisible, or a knight becoming unusable after pawns get on the same place.

I had fun, thanks for the game 💕

Very nice game and concept. If your want I found two bugs and one inaccuracy, but it was fun nonetheless.
When you place a rock on a tree you can't pick it up; When you change the map and go on an occupied field the other figure can't move anymore; The pawn isn't able to defeat the king.:)
I like the graphics very much and the ending was nice.

I can report all the bugs the two comments above posted as well.
It would of been nice to have some music or a piece sliding sound though. The game could of looked better as well.

Your puzzles were well designed, I enjoyed this.

The best LD47 game I've played so far, even if it's not really related to the theme.

The pixel art graphics are nice.

I absolutely love the universe, the idea to make chess pieces alive, and the fact they team up together.

(Spoilers below, don't read below if you want to discover the game by yourself).

The "neutral village" is very interesting. They choosed to not participate in the fights, but they are still annoyed by the white pieces. Their own convictions tell them not to retaliate, but they wonder about that choice. A philosophical approach of non-violence.

The dialogue of the neutral pawn lumberjack is the same before and after he gives you the axe. That's a little too bad. He could have said something like "thank you for having chased the white pawns".

The violet ground at the end looks like you did not have time to draw something better. Am I right ?

I finished the game without killing the king (he was asking for mercy !!). I moved my pawn upwards and changed it in a queen. Was that supposed to happen like that ?


Maybe you should try this game on Kongregate : https://www.kongregate.com/games/FractalSunrise/knight-errant?haref=HP_FRB_knight-errant . It's the main idea, with less story and less graphics, but the enemy pieces can move.

Thank you once again.

@doot @probeprob @wolfier Thanks for the feedback! Yeah there are definitely lots of placement bugs that affect some of the gameplay. There are also weird things that happen, like moving a piece up a board causes it to take one of your other pieces and restart the board. I'll fix a bunch of these if I work on this some more.

@recher Thanks so much for the encouragement! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game. I've just played (and finished) Knight Errant and I really liked it. I like that chess pieces give you the ability to sort of solve a puzzle incrementally and in different ways, rather than having to find the exact right solution every time. I started to explore the idea of a chess "battle" scenario on the last screen or two of this game, but I think there's a lot of fun to be found there, especially if the rook can do things like place rocks in different places to block enemy moves.

As for the other feedback - I didn't get around to changing up the lumberjack's dialogue, but that would've been good. I like that you saw that aspect of the neutral village characters. I'd really would've liked to flesh that out more, but it was late and I'm not a particularly experienced writer. The violet ground at the end is also terrible - it's supposed to be a space background, but I'm not an artist, so it needs a good art pass.

Thanks again for your feedback (and for the link) :)

Great concept! I liked playing chess, but with houses and rivers. Something familiar, but in a new interpretation. Well done!

This was really original and fun. Some of the puzzles could have been harder. I really enjoyed it.

Nice - I haven't seen any chess-based games on LD before :smile:

Love this combination, it opens up many possibilities for world building and exploration

Cool chess themed game! Once you figured out what you were doing it was cool and the interactions with the other pieces was done well. Could have used a bit of a tutorial to establish what your objective was.

I had so much fun playing this game. Would love if some of the white pieces moved so you could avoid the quickly moving to capture them before they can capture you mechanic.

Neat game. Maybe a bit on the easy side since the enemies will rarely ever move except to attack in a few cases. The idea of 'the world beyond the chessboard' was cool and definitely has a lot of room to be explored.

I liked the graphics, but the chess pieces were iffy - it's pretty clear they've been downscaled (somewhat messily) from somewhere even without you mentioning it in the description. Would've preferred hand-crafted sprites in your style - but maybe you ran out of time?

Overall a fun experience, good work.

I absolutely loved this game. When I was a kid I would make up stories for the pieces as well ahahaha. Really funny and super cool mechanics. Please continue this idea it is really awesome. Easily one of my favourite games of LD47 so far.

I liked how you managed to turn chess into an adventure, I found some bugs but still managed to reach the end. I'd love to see a full game like this.

Surprisingly good game.

# +
Very innovative, a chess adventure is something I've never seen before...
Fun and humorous, a surprising amount of personality was infused into the pieces.
The feel is that of an epic adventure. The ending being the ocean was perfect.

# -
As you said yourself, lack of sound and music. Considering the limited time though, I think it was well worth it to get the rest of the game done before starting on that.
Graphics weren't perfect. I liked most of it, but some sprites (most notably the grey pawns) were blurred and a bit weird. The grass also didn't feel quite right (although that is one that I've struggled with a lot myself and never solved). This is not a huge problem, i like the overall aesthetic, and i definitely couldn't have done better myself, but it's worth being said.


_______________
Great Job!

Thanks very much for your comments everyone!

@blue-pin-studio Yeah, a tutorial, or at least some more establishing dialogue at the beginning would help the player understand what Pip's goal is. I really just needed more time there.

@empty-set Yeah, I only really got the enemy "battles" in towards the end, and in my sleepy state I was terrified of trying to figure out enemy movement AI for chess! So I simplified it and just made the pieces move when they could take you. In larger version, enemy moving would be great.
I did link where I got the piece sprites at the bottom of my description, and I didn't have time to make proper ones. This was my first time doing pixel graphics in a full game, so I'm not exactly fast at it.

@enad96 Thanks so much! I'm glad it was one of your faves :)

@invixel Thanks for the detailed feedback. Yeah pixel graphics isn't my strong suit, or any art for that matter, but it was really fun to do some art for this jam. The lack of audio is a really disappointing omission though. I have a few shortcuts to add sound easily to the game, but I just ran out of time.

I very much love the idea of this game, and would definitely, definitely tell you to keep working on it. It has a lot of potential, especially with the little cute pieces of story and dialogue. Just like the game Thomas was Alone, you gave these little chess pieces their own personality which I loved. The gameplay is really fun too, but I have to admit that it was like a million years ago since I last played chess, so I got stuck (yes, embarrasing, I know), HOWEVER, I totally see the potential of implementing chess rules into this sort of a game. Genius! Like I said, i hope you keep working on it, and best of luck :)

@virtual-turtle-studio Thanks so much, that's great to hear! I'd like to keep working on this at some stage, and don't worry, I'm terrible at Chess and refuse to try and get better, hence my desire to try and make a game that only has a few pieces on the board at once :P It still gets tricky though.

Very cool idea! It's somehow very satisfying to move the pieces without waiting for the enemy. I love the way the enemies and neutral pieces were talking to my pieces. I wish there was audio but I understand how it goes during the jam. The graphics are good but I'm especially impressed with the overall idea. Great job!

@codertrevor Thanks so much!