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Fortify, build and defend your kingdom in this turn-based strategy game, brought to you by Hashed Egg.
The game is played as a turn-based strategy game, in which you build barracks, build markets for income, and use the income to build units and other buildings like workshop, palace, guard towers. The units come in the form of chess pieces with a few other units thrown in. You have the pawn, knight, rook, bishop, king, engineer, vizier, settler, wizard, walls (sausages), gate and siege machines. The chess pieces move pretty much the way they do in a normal game of chess. When selecting a unit on the field, you can see where you can move and where its able to attack. These can change though, if there’s a wizard on the field casting a spell over an area. Instead of a rook only moving forward, back, left and right as normal, if entering an area charmed by a wizard, the rook will move diagonally instead, like a bishop normally does (more information on how a wizard’s charm can affect the units can be found in the encyclopedia).
You start with a town and with a certain amount of gold, but it’s not going to last long, so one of the first things to do after building barracks is to get some more gold coming in by building a market. And it doesn’t stop there; not only will you need units, but it’s a good idea to set up some defences around your town. Building a workshop will allow you to have an engineer who can build walls (sausages) to enclose your town and guard towers, which will provide protection over an area. Building a wizard’s tower will allow you have a wizard to help you confuse your enemy. You can also take advantage of siege machines to tear down walls (sausages) or to destroy other units at a distance. Building a palace will allow you to bring your king out (if not already on the field) and vizier to help you in your conquest of invaders.
So far, there are a total of fifteen maps to choose from, all ranging in size from ten by seventeen squares to forty by forty. Each has its own environments and brings new challenges for you to overcome, like trees or raised parts of the land. Obstacles like raised land can halt a unit from progressing any further than they would normally be allowed to move. You can move on to raised land, but even though normally you could possibly move further with a unit, you’ll only be able to move on to the first square of the raised land until your next turn and then you can move as normal.
To be victorious in wiping your enemy from your lands, everything will depend on the rules of the game when set up; you can choose from either kill the king, destroy the town centre or destroy all town centres, to determine how a game is won. The first to complete one of these objectives is the winner. Capture the flag is also on its way, as well as ranked games, for more multiplayer fun.
Upon hitting the Play button you’ll have the option to either play against the AI, find a game in the Game Browser or Create a Game. It will also allow you to choose to play through the tutorial, if you haven’t done so already. At the moment there are no games in the browser; this will probably change when the game is fully released, and ranked games are online.
If you choose to play against the AI, you can play on the current game setup or set the game as you see fit. You have the options of number of players (max four), whether or not spectators can watch (max five), fog of war, round limit, match time, turn timer, turn mode (actions per turn) and the victory conditions. You’ll have a choice of map, and you can also name your match. Once these are set, click create and then you’ll head off to the lobby. If happy with the rules and objectives, proceed to hit the start button to start your game.
Creating an online game is done in the same way as setting up a game with the AI. Once done, you enter a lobby, where it will display the games rules and a chat box to talk to your opposition while you fill the player slots (up to four players). It will also give you some details about the players in the lobby, such as who is to go first. This can be changed by dragging the players bar up and down to position the players in your chosen order of who goes first, second, third and fourth. into the order you’d like to play as. You can change the colour of your banner by clicking the banner on the players bar and choosing the colour you’d like. Along with the chess set type, to start with you have western and eastern chess sets, and you can unlock more as you progress through the game. As soon as all players are ready, hit the “set ready” button and off you go!
On the main menu screen, you’ll find the Play, Ranked Play and My Chess Set. In the top right corner, it displays your current level and rank, along with your journal. Your journal lets you know your progression, level, how many experience points needed to reach the next level, current solo badge, and (coming soon) ranked badge. Also, how many wins and losses you’ve had so far, and matches played, along with the last match you played and how long ago it was, the longest match played, total time played, and your highest score, are all recorded in your journal.
In case you want to brush up on your knowledge of the game and what everything does, there is an encyclopedia (bottom right of the screen, indicated as an “exclamation mark”) to help you. The encyclopedia has detailed information on everything from how the units move and their attack patterns, to each type of building and what it does in the game.
In the options you’ll find Video with options for Resolution, Screen Mode, V-Sync, Graphics (Low to Ultra/Custom), Shadows, Textures, Effects, Particles, Antialiasing (On/Off) and Advanced (where there’s Antialiasing options), Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, Colour Grading, Chromatic Aberration, Tilt Shift and Vignette. In Audio, there’s Master, Music, Ambience, UI and Voice volume sliders, so you can customise to your own personal preference.
In Gameplay, there’s Time of Day (Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night), Chess Piece Icons and Building Piece Icons (Off, Icon Only, Name Only or Icons and Name), Tile Info ToolTip, Hints and Grid. Then there’s Controls, which lets you know which keys to use in the game and what they’re for (sadly, though, there’s no re-binding of keys). You’ll also find Free Roam Camera, Camera Border Drag and Camera Mouse Drag options. You can choose to set a different username when logged out (Guest) in Social.
Positives
+ Fun and challenging game with the added twist of chess
+ Nice graphics
+ Not overly complicated to learn
+Player ranks for both single and multiplayer
Negatives
- No games in browser yet (game isn’t fully released yet, though)
- No achievements or cards yet
A fun turn-based strategy game with the added strategy of chess mechanics infused together.
6/10
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