
Passant is a chess roguelike that changes all the rules. Progress through challenging rounds while collecting powerful pieces and game-changing items to seize victory.
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About
Passant is a chess roguelike, where the rules can be twisted and unique pieces can be used to change the game.

Build your board by earning powerful pieces with unique rules, items to change the tide of battle, and badges that can twist all the rules to deliver victory. Beat match after match of increasing difficulty until you can beat the final boss and become a grandmaster.

Expands on the rules of chess:
Unique pieces, such as the Archbishop, Dragon Knight, Dragon King and more!
Twists on traditional chess, such as Atomic Chess, Reflecting Bishops and Zombie Pawns.
Usable items that can give you an advantage, such as freezing a piece, demoting a piece to a pawn, or promoting one of yours to a queen!

There are also challenge modes and increasing levels of AI difficulty, so beginners and grandmasters alike can enjoy the game.
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 42 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 42 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
I liked some things about this game, but ultimately I can't bear how hard it is to see what's going on. It should have a 2D board option, but it doesn't. On the 3D one it's hard to tell pieces from other modified ones that are similar. It needs a 2D board with clean icons, and like 180% the size of the current 3D board. I played for like 90 minutes and my eyes feel tired. Difficulty in this game just means throwing more stuff at you, for example, the level I lost in had like nine rooks and six knights, and I had like three rooks, four knights and eight bishops. It's cool for a few games, but then it gets old fast, because it gets more crowded but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can do new cool things; you just have to do the same thing as in the previous level but for longer. I spent a while thinking about how to fix this, but I couldn't come up with anything; it's clear that something is missing, but it's hard to say what exactly. Some parts of the UI are sort of a Balatro clone, but they look cheap, like drawn on Paint or something. The effects of the pieces and badges are not super interesting, and they don't interact with each other to make cool stuff happen; it's mostly pretty bland. I've had this on my wishlist for months and was sure I'd like it, but it's like the game is incomplete. Bosses don't feel like bosses. 'Floors' don't feel different to the previous one. Your options to buy and play stuff don't increase a lot as you climb levels... It feels like 75% of a game, but the other 25% is the one that was gonna make it fun.
This game is terribly optimized and barely runs even though it is just a chess game. Learn to code.
Really not all that fun. Somehow pinpoints having too many unique options without meaningfully changing the gameplay loop. Not for me.
very good thanks
I'm super bad at chess and I was hoping that the modifiers along with the beginner difficulty would make the game fun for me. Nope. I can't even pass the easiest challenge in the game and it takes the enemy AI 70 turns to figure out how to checkmate me. Also, while you can speed up the animations, you have to wait until the text says whose turn it is before clicking on your piece, and that makes it slower than it needs to be. I really wish I could like this game, but it's frustating, I wish I could make it easier for me.
Слегка разочаровало. Дизбалансные шахматы с не очень активной прогрессией, где не чувствуется что ты собираешь какой-то свой билд, а просто постепенно выравниваешь свои шансы с прогрессирующим противником (который почти всегда с обычными фигурами, реже появляются дизбалансные пешки и реже кастомные фигуры) с периодическим перевесом в разные стороны, в итоге в 90% случаев всё упирается в ваш шахматный скилл. А что я ожидал от игры по шахматам? Какой-то интересной интерпретации, в итоге легче просто поиграть в оригинал на личес или ческом. Так же игра как-то физиологически отталкивает, от однообразности игры и фигур противника до плохого русского перевода(спасибо что хотя бы он есть), все такие мелкие детали не дают в голове сформироваться желанию вернуться в игру и изучать её дальше. Буду следить за развитием игры, с радостью дам ей второй шанс ибо задумка перспективная. И конечно критикуешь - предлагай: 1. Как-то уникализировать стиль. Глаз не цепляется за обычные 3д фигурки и даже какие-то крутые кастомные фигуры не кажутся такими пока не прочитаешь описание и не увидишь на сколько много клеток они ходят. Например в балатро, которым вдохновлялись авторы, что как бы правильно, надо вдохновляться хорошими играми, там у каждого джокера есть своя "харизма", видя большинство впервые сразу их хочешь затестить до прочтения описания, то же и про обычные карты с разными дизайнами. 2. Разный характер и фигуры для противников. Разные характеры для противников разнообразят обычные партии, один отдаёт приоритет ходам пешкой, другой пытается сделать многоходовки с разной степенью удачности, другой минирует всё поле своими конями и тд и тп, и для этого ещё добавить интересные фигуры чисто для противника, например вместо этих "мужчин" для любителя пешек добавить разные виды пешек, одна ходит по диагонали и ест вперёд, другая срубает фигуру ходит за неё как в шашках и тд и так подчеркнуть стиль разных противников 3. ну и конечно продолжать работу над игрой и не терять мотивацию, для многих объективно игра покажется интересной, просто я вижу безумный потенциал и сейчас пока играть смысла не вижу, на интуитивных и нарративных уровнях это обычные шахматы, просто много партий подряд
Игра сложная, но интересная не пожалел что купил
Awesome chess game. 9/10.
Настоятельно рекомендую всем, кто любит побаловаться шахматами, но и не профессиональный игрок. Я жестко залип, чего и вам желаю!
Turning chess into a roguelite is a tough premise, because the skill difference in chess players is huge. If your game is 95% chess then grandmaster level players will breeze through your game without having to interact with your roguelike mechanics at all, and at that point they might aswell play chess. If the roguelike mechanics are so powerful that chess noobs can rely on them for support, and playing correct moves is no longer important, then your game becomes just about the metagame and the chess is trivialized. At the end of the day Passant suffers from the same issue, but until you've figured out all the mechanics it's actually a great game. You have to play decent chess in the early game, where material is equal, and you have to interact with roguelike mechanics because your opponents will have 70 points of material in the later game. Once you've figured out which items are good then it's just chess again though, so for me it's back to chess.com. All in all 7€ well spent though -- Passant is probably my favourite chess roguelite, on par with Usurper.
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Trends
Concurrent players on Steam, sampled daily since tracking started.
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
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