At first, like a top helpful reviewer said, I was getting confused with the way the pieces work, because they work the opposite way as in classic chess — you can only move a piece to squares with other pieces and instead of the moved piece switching places with the one you moved into, it gets absorbed and the remaining piece switch its color to match the color of the absorbed piece. Initially I got a bad impression out of this and I thought I wouldn't like the game, but then, without even realizing it, I intuitively got the hang of it and was moving pieces as expected without a hitch. I got pretty surprised by how my body just unconsciously internalized these new mechanics. After that, I had no more issues moving my pieces around the board and the only difficulties I had were the difficulties provided by the current level I was in. So, although the other reviewer gave a fair review, I think you should disregard his criticism of the initial confuse we get from these counter-intuitive mechanics and just give this game a go and judge it by what it is. You'll get the hang of the mechanics in no time and without even realizing it.
Now about the game itself, the game consists of 100 levels of progressive difficulty that steeply increases when more colors are added to the board — from 1 up to 4, a new color is added at levels multiple of 25, or more or less so. Just like in classic chess you need to have a good understanding of the whole board to plan all your moves ahead and eliminate all the pieces. When more colors are added you need to find out which pieces you need to move first so you can make pieces switch colors in an appropriate order, thus quite a bit of planing is necessary to beat the game. Overall, as a novice chess player, this was a very fun challenge and helped me improve my understanding of the chessboard. It took me about 6h to finish the 100 levels.
The game is cheap, so I fully recommend the game, even at full price, but the game has some issues, which I'll list below together with a few suggestions:
[h2]Bugs[/h2]
[list]
[*] Q and E to turn the camera aren't working — but you can move the camera around holding the RMB;
[*] Level select isn't working — you can only use the scroll wheel to slide the level select screen and the scroll wheel sensitivity is too low, barely usable (this is a major issue for replayability and should be fixed ASAP).
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[h2]Feature Suggestions[/h2]
[list]
[*] Allow scrolling the level select screen using the keyboard (WASD and arrow keys);
[*] Make the level select screen a grid — currently, the level select screen is a horizontal list;
[*] Infinite undo — currently, you can only undo last move using Z;
[*] A screen button for undo — currently, you can only undo last move using the keyboard;
[*] R to reset — currently there is only a screen button;
[*] A slider to control the brightness of the floor — sometimes the reflection on the pieces is too bright;
[*] A stylized cursor to give the game some oomph — currently, the game uses the PC default cursor.
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[h2]Steam Store Page Suggestions[/h2]
[list]
[*] A more high quality trailer — very undermining, I almost didn't buy the game, but I own almost all Minimol Games' games;
[*] Add the name of the piece set in the description and where to find it, if it was created by Minimol Games itself it would be another selling point and a good information to divulge — I just love this piece set, I wish I could acquire it somehow, in all the four different colors!
[/list]
[h2]DLC Suggestion[/h2]
[list]
[*] A 3D blueprint for the piece set — just like in [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2673930/Chessarama__Supporter_Pack_3D_Printable_Models_Art_Book_and_More/]Chessarama - Supporter Pack (3D Printable Models, Art Book, and More!)[/url]
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P.S. I know this is the work of a small development team and that they are already quite busy with all their other titles available on the store — early access and full releases — and that this game was released quite a while ago, but some of these issues should be addressed — namely, the bugs —, especially since they don't seem that hard to fix or implement. Best wishes to the devs though, and, as always, I'll keep an eye on their future releases!
