Very cool game! I had a blast playing :D

The sound effect was a bit loud and got my by surprise. Took me a while to understand why the npc could make 2 moves and I could not, but once I got it figured out I had fun :) good job

Cool chess-like game! The controls were a bit difficult to understand at first (very little visual feedback) but it was fun nonetheless. I liked the dice rolling!

Something new and fresh. Enjoyed this it should have more plays. Good job!

Not going to lie, the first time I captured a knight, the sound effect scared me half to death. That said, this was a fun game. Love the AI, love the dice physical rolling dice, love that you included a CPU vs Player mode, and a cool game concept. Great work!


Cool boardgame! I think it would be nicer if the dices were rolled faster. And the swords sound shocked me in the first time! hahahaha It is nice thinking on 8 max move steps ahead, and it is very hard to see a game for 2 players here, good job!

It's a really cool board game, I might see if I can make it with paper and counters haha
My two criticism would be it needs some more visual feedback like people have said(maybe put some markers on the board where your guys can move) and the dice are a bit slow to fall. I had fun playing though!

The physical dice-rolling was really charming, even if it felt a little bit slow after a few turns - It would have been nice to have the option to skip the animation, but it was still very cool!

I definitely agree with the folks who said that the sound effects startled them - I had my volume turned way up, and got quite a scare when my piece was taken for the first time!

I liked the gameplay! The dice rolling animations look good and I liked them but during the game they felt slow. I wanted to see the result of dice rolling as quickly as it could be to continue playing! = ) Would be nice if the dice rolling animations were skippable or "speed-uppable" I thought.

Very well done sir! Fun game and reminds of a few animated chess games I have played in the past, or Wizard's chess like the Harry Potter(tm) wizards play. I expect to see some carnage and battle animation in future iterations. :) The game is unique in its' ruleset which I can really appreciate given the time constraints and AI, Kudos! The AI and movement grid path finding was really well done. The CPU opponent kicked my butt every time. After discovering I had to spend all my dice points I was using statistical dice odds to try and position my units in a way that if I hit the statistical sweet spot I would prosper, but never got lucky enough to win a round. I wound up watching the CPU battle - Blue was the best during simulations!

I really enjoyed the playing board scenery, and the large slow dice rolls added some epic tension and scale to the battle. The dice rolls, and unit movement success and movement failures errors could use some feedback sound effects. I was frustrated a few times at my inability to take a enemy knight, because I wasn't spending all the spaces dictated by the dice roll, if by design that could be useful information for the tutorial.

Applause to you!

Interesting game, I like the little attentions to detail like the dice rolling, and it's neat that you implemented an AI. The combination of chess-like mechanics with dice rolls has a lot of potential I think.

@beanslasher - glad you liked it!

@symnel - It've fixed the loud sound, technically it was a glitch as the volume wasn't calcing correctly. Thanks for your feedback!

@lectvs - I'm glad you liked the dice rolling, because i BARELY got it in. There was a bug that constantly ready dice rolled as "4" to return "2" or "1" instead, and I spent hours reworking it. I'm glad I could get it in, because randomly-generated numbers would've been dull;

@gamer-fates - Thanks, I wish I could've incorporated the theme more creatively but I was happy to try some new stuff. The dice-rolling mechanic was one I chose just to make it more unique, and this is the most advanced computer-controlled AI that I've ever attempted.

@human-writes-code - I fixed the sound volume. I literally threw those two sound effects in the last 10 minutes because I burnt so much time on fixing a glitch that I accidentally had them way too loud.

@welliton - The dice were a little glitched as well. They should be better now, but any other changes would probably break jam rules (a speedup would probably be considered an added feature, not a bug fix). I'll definitely keep that in mind for my post-jam improvments.

@murrzipan - I did want to put more visual feedback but that was one of the things cut for time. I'm not sure I'd want markers to show where you can go because it might make the game too easy, but I'll consider it for post-jam.

@sergei - The dice should be quicker now with a bug fix, but to add a speed-up feature I'll have to wait until after voting is done. Thanks!

@boboman - maybe some carnage added. One of the things cut for time was some colorful player behavior, mainly funny quips like you'd hear in the "worms" games. The AI wound up being easy than expected but harder than I hoped, I might try to rewrite it with different skill levels since there's some complaint about difficulty. I unfortunately only got to do about half the scenery I wanted to, so I'll follow up with that.

@nazorus - The dice rolling and AI are the reasons this is my favorite game so far, it was challenging but satisfying!

This is a genuinely fun game, you've done really well.
Only suggestions I've got would be with the game speed. The gameplay itself is SO much fun, but waiting for the pieces to move and the dice to roll can be a bit tedious.

However I love this idea so much, I might make a physical version for me and my friends to play!
Keep up the great work!

very interesting

Ineresting, good luck ❤

It's a pretty fun game. The only complaint I have is that it's a bit slow.

Nice spin on chess :). It is too slow though and it feels like you are waiting forever for the dice to stop rolling and inform you of result. The pieces move slow as well.Graphics is nice if simple, but the blue text color chosen is too dark and it reads unpleasantly as a result.

Overall, I enjoyed it and had time to make few coffees while waiting for the dice rolls. So, profit all around :wink:

I'm not really a chess guy, but it is well executed, even I got beat each time by the AI x)
I think that you should add more feedback, especially on animation side for the knights, it feels a bit rigid for now. However, I liked a lot the animation that you did on the roll dice !

Moreover, it misses a music background, I think that it would be nicer to have one.

Overall gg for your work !

I liked that, even when only a few of the opponent's knights were on the board, I was still waiting for a dreaded 3 on a roll that would kill one of my vulnerable forward pieces. GGs, opponent! ;)
I felt like dice could use more weight and a sound effect. On the other hand, it created an impression, like if I am playing a boardgame on a surface of a low-gravity moon - kinda interesting feeling :) Linux build worked well for me! Thank you for providing it!

Cute game and idea, however the controls were extremely complicated and hard to understand for me, idk if it was just me, I would enjoy if you could add a little video as tutorial where you show how to play it :)
The knights were cute and I love the idea! Reminds me of the witcher minigames like Gwent or Dice Poker (I played that one sooo much lol) The cube animation/simulation/physics was nice and I loved the design with the spikes (I was wondering at first how you were gonna do that with 4 sides, I expected a tetraeder and then I was like "ahhhh.." ^^)
Good job on finishing your game all alone! :)

@ohfiddlediddle
I plan on adding a speed/skip feature in the post-jam version of the game. FYI, the 4-sided dice mechanics and some of the movement were inspired by a board game called "Ninja VS Ninja", you should get a physical version of that.

@pixelschnauzer @fabula-rasa
Everyone is complaining about the speed, so I'll definitely do something about that for the post-jam version. I'm thinking just a button of click should speed up the timeline so the physics still work as-is. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!

@edalbung
The dice rolling is physics, not animation. I never did animate the knights because of time restraints, I had to remove their smooth movement because it was janky and I didn't fix it. As for music, I know a few musicians so will likely reach out to one of them for the remake. Thanks for your input!

@civmaniac
Yeah there was originally a glitch that had the dice even lighter. I thought this was a good balance because it give the impression that they have actual weight (and therefore, power) to them, like it'd actually crush the knights if it could reach them. Still, I'll work on a way to skip/speed up the rolls for the post-jam version.
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for confirming that the Linux build is good!

@fatpenguin
A video would have been nice but time didn't allow for it, at least not in-game. I've added a gameplay video on this page, mainly to talk about development, but I think it explains the gameplay too. For the post-jam version I'm thinking of having a "tutorial mode" that teaches to you play as you go, as the game is actually pretty easy to pick up by gameplay when you have guidance.
I never did play those games you mentioned, actually I never played Witcher (It's on my list)

This is such a fun game! I'm not going to beat a dead horse with feedback, everyone has already addressed that the gameplay can be a little slow after a couple playthroughs, so I won't harp on that. I've never designed a boardgame, but I've always imagined that it would be incredibly difficult to design something both fresh and fun, and you've done that here. It has the feel of one of those timeless games like tetris or chess. In fact, it does feel very much like chess or checkers with a greater element of randomness to it. That's helpful for new players and even the playing field, but it doesn't do much right now to reward skill or experience in the game (that I can see, at least.) I could easily see myself playing this for hours if you could find a way to tweak it to do that. Either way it was very fun and I played several games. Thanks for sharing!

Pretty innovative game! It's amazing you add AI to a chess-like game because that must have been pretty complicated. It would've been cooler if there's more feedback when the pieces takes action, but maybe it's just me because I like flashy stuff. Overall nicely done!

That was an interesting game! It's impressive that you put this together in such a short time, especially the AI. The gameplay was fun and the mix of luck and strategy felt very much like backgammon. During the game I found myself wishing that that the movement and the dice rolling would be a lot faster, it felt like a lot of the time was waiting for things to happen rather than strategising. I had fun playing, hope to see this project continue post-jam. Good job!

So nice to the a video of your game! This is so much appreciated and I had a lot of fun playing. Wish you good luck.

Well That was fun! I played the computer, and my brother fun both times. I have made a checkers game in the past with an cpu opponent, it was not easy... like at all, and that was just Checkers! Very impressive with your game! Great job!

Fun game, liked the dice. Won with my last remaining knight, the AI parked a knight right next to my egg for a few turns (where you can't roll a 1 to take the egg) then moved it away :)

Interesting chess-like game, I agree with most of the feedback but I got a question...should there be sound? I can't hear any music...

@nathan-wiles - Thanks for the feedback. I think you give me a bit too much credit, but I am thinking of a post-jam release that fixes the pacing issue and tweaks the rules/AI to make the game more strategic instead of random.

@ahistyap- The AI was pretty complicated, but was actually easier than I expected, and could have been easier than I made it (I thought of better techniques when it was too late). I also like flashy things, but since time ran out it'll have to wait for post-jam.

@mhykah - The pacing is the #1 complaint on this game so you're not alone there. Thanks for your kind words

@savvu - Thanks, good luck to you, too. I figured a video was good way to explain some of my decisions and struggles, but it also wound up being a decent quick gameplay tutorial IMO.

@creamybacon2- Thank you very much. I'm glad to hear that someone's tried PVP on this, I assumed that people would either be playing entirely by themselves (hence why I put a CPU opponent in at all).

@jamesvaughan Yes, that's a good place for a defender to be but not for an attacker, hence why you can only get to that spot near your own egg by killing one of theirs. If I tweak the AI post-jam, I want to make it consider things like that.

@giulia - There are two sound effects, a slicing sound when a knight kills another knight, and a crunching sound when a knight kills an egg. I also had the knights screaming when killed but there was a glitch that had it always play loudly, so I removed it. I also had "walking" sounds for the knights before release but it was too annoying. Truth be told, I had a ridiculous glitch with the dice that I didn't get fixed until 15 minutes before deadline, and I thew those few sound effects in then!

Ooh, a new chess-like strategy game. I always find good and unique ideas for these to be nearly impossible to conceive, so kudos to you for giving it a shot.

Everyone else has already mentioned pacing and sound effects - I won't pile on to that.

If you're not going to animate the knight movements then I'd just have them jump straight to their target space. It was a bit annoying clicking on my target and getting no visual feedback for a moment that my click had registered.

Onto the game itself - I think this is a great little strategy game for a jam, as it's a fresh concept, it's easy to pick up, and the AI seems pretty well done given the time span. That being said, I don't see myself being able to play this more than once. The RNG component is part of what allows the gameplay to be both so simple and so playable - but is also unfortunately a really imposing ceiling on the entire game. RNG and chess, for example, are completely incompatible - what's the point of trying to execute grand strategies if it can all be undone by a few lucky rolls by my opponent?

You mentioned earlier that:

> I’m not sure I’d want markers to show where you can go because it might make the game too easy

I *strongly* disagree with this stance. Figuring out what their movement options are should be the easy part for the player - the game's challenge should come in with figuring out which of their options follow their ideal strategy, or if none of them are ideal and they should move a different piece. Plus this would aid new players in visualizing the rules of the game.

All in all I genuinely enjoyed my playthru, it's a unique concept, the dice rolling gives the game a more authentic charm, and the difficulty feels just about right for me.

interesting chess like concept. game mechanic pretty good & i like the graphics. good work! :thumbsup:

Hey! Played your game a bit, had few things to say,
https://youtu.be/enn-76VtPn8?t=116

I really enjoyed this! It surprisingly plays a lot differently than chess or checkers. I did get a bug where the enemy landed on me but my player disappeared. I also would recommend making the dice roll much faster or an option to roll them instantly. Nice :D

Original view on the topic, well done! But I think the idea of special cubes is strange

Very cool game, Unfortunately I have no friends, so I couldn't play it.

Remember when it was played in classical chess. A simple and straightforward game. I would like more shapes and can make them unique)

@epicular - Thanks for your feedback. I hear what you say about the randomness of the dice going against the strategy. It was suppose to mimc a board game, but I am putting thoughts into how to make the post-jam version more strategy based. It's possible the egg's role will be tweaked or replaced entirely.
I'm still fighting with the idea of showing all player moves, because I don't want players to just click all their pieces and immediately see all possibilities. I think that will even further remove strategy from the game. But, everyone wants it so I must be the one who's wrong, I'll have to figure out how to do that right.

@amazura - thank you very much. I'm glad you like the graphics because I'm actually very noonish with modeling (could you telll?). I'm going to practice more so hopefully next jam I'll be much better.

@kaafirookie - Thanks for the very detailed insight into the game. I'm taking all you suggestions into consideration for not only the post-jam version, but my future projects as well.

@adonisdevs - You mean the enemy landed on you but you didn't disappear? I think I noticed that once in a CPU vs CPU session but I didn't figure out the bug. Hopefully when I start over with the post-jam version I will avoid that bug altogether. The dice roll will be quicker/skippable in the next version, too.

@krakadushka - The 4-sided dice unfortunately wasn't my idea, it was from a board game I played a few years back. I can only take credit for creating it in video game form. With traditional dice, it'd be potentially too high numbers for such a small board. With a larger board, there'd be too many low roles that don't go anywhere.

@slimbun - You can still play it, there's single-player modes. Just choose "Player vs CPU" or "CPU vs Player", depending on if you want to be on team green or team blue.

@omickron - I'll have to think about that. I'm brainstorming for the post-jam version, and unique player characters/abilities might make gameplay interesting. But I'm also trying to keep it simple and easily approachable.

Very neat idea. It's a simple game, but that doesn't mean it's an easy one unfortunately. I felt it had a good mix of challenge while also being fairly understandable. Not a lot I can add on without echoing what others have already said, so all-in-all this was a good game!

Interesting take on a chess game that can make it more engaging since it feels like the peaces are alive and you have to keep them alive giving you more of an incentive to perform well or else their lives are at stake ;)

Hey @shaolin-dave! I have already voted your game, but you asked me to notify you as soon as my game (Protect the torch) has an update :smile: I've just released yesterday a big update. So if you are still interested i'd be happy if you do.