Terraforming Chess by Sir Rail Of Gun

[raw]
made by Sir Rail Of Gun for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

Chess, but your forces wield terraforming technologies, restricting the play space as turns pass. Rules are as normal chess, with the following changes. As such, you may also play this game with a physical chess set, so long as you have extra markers for Wall, Pit, and Ice tiles.

Pawns are now Workers. They retain their special 2-space move, can perform En Passant, and can be promoted. In addition, they ignore special terrain types, restoring tiles they enter to normal.

Rooks are now Extruders. They create a Wall tile in the space they started in which blocks the movement of all pieces except pawns and knights. Castling, while not technically disallowed, is functionally impossible due to the king ending on the bishop's space, which is almost guaranteed to be a pit. As such, our game does not implement castling in any way, but feel free to use it on a physical board.

Bishops are now Sappers. They create a Pit in the tile they started in that capture any pieces except pawns that stop on them. Kings cannot legally move into a pit, thus they can be used to checkmate.

Knights are now Cryoformers. They leave tiles of Ice in the space they started in, which causes pieces that would stop in that space to slide. Pieces that slide cannot capture until they stop sliding. Pieces that slide into a wall/board edge stop, even if still on ice. Pieces that slide into a pit are captured.

Queens are now Mass Transmuters. When they move, choose a tile type. Queens transmute every tile they pass over to the chosen type, except the destination tile.

Kings are now your Terraforming Core. They can, instead of moving, change an adjacent unoccupied tile into any other tile. Kings can transmute tile to remove the King from check. As the algorithms for check/checkmate are complex and our time and energy are limited, we have not implemented check nor checkmate in our code. The game still ends when a player's king is captured.

Bugfixed version makes some buttons easier to click and fixes the piece order.

Ratings

Overall 964th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1017th 2.763⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 301th 3.675⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1025th 2.825⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 963th 2.579⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 843th 2.237⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 42🗳️ 6🗨️

Feedback

Joshua_Reumann
02. Oct 2023 · 21:38 UTC
Nice idea but needs balancing and bugfixing
helluin
02. Oct 2023 · 21:39 UTC
Interesting idea with the special tiles created by different pieces. sadly i didnt quite get how the controlls worked because the pieces werent quite doing what i expected them to.
LDJam user 378081
02. Oct 2023 · 21:45 UTC
The mad guys they did a couch 1v1 game for the Ludum Dare.

No real idea how fun this is while playing alone but I sure enjoyed reading the description of units and imagining how it could change chess... forever.

I'm... Kinda surprised the bishop and knights swapped places? Or is that an oversight?
Igor Fam
03. Oct 2023 · 11:56 UTC
Really clever and creative! The controls could have been made a little clearer, but great concept overall!
Steffo
04. Oct 2023 · 00:37 UTC
Interesting concept!

What's the difference between walls and pits?

I didn't manage to understand from your description.

*(Won't rate the game because I didn't have anyone to play the game with.)*
Enad96
04. Oct 2023 · 13:12 UTC
Finally the chess 1.1.2 patch notes, about time knight got nerfed for real. When you dropping the chess battle pass?
m0rph1y
04. Oct 2023 · 15:36 UTC
Like ur game!
Ackbad
05. Oct 2023 · 20:59 UTC
It needs a basic AI to play against to better understand how the game plays, even if all the AI dose is random moves.
Shiiro 10psi
09. Oct 2023 · 01:06 UTC
I love weird chess games. I think there's something wrong with the walls. I could move bishops through but not knights.
LDJam user 4886
09. Oct 2023 · 09:40 UTC
oook... this one was weird, but I think it has tons of potential! Chess pieces altering the nature of the board itself sounds compelling!