
Pawnbarian is a quick-playing, turn-based puzzle roguelike. Play cards to move your hero like a chess piece, and conquer challenging dungeons full of cunning monsters!
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 0.29/day in the week to Sep 7 → 0/day in the week after.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 0.29/day in the week to Jul 30 → 0.14/day in the week after.
For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 26 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 7 places towards #1, and the 2,400 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
About
Genres
Add-ons
Each DLC is estimated with the same model as a game, then summed — a modeled figure, not reported DLC sales.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 58 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
[h1][b]Neither here nor there:[/b] Pawnbarian[/h1] If I had a nickel for every time I played a roguelike tactical reimagining of chess, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, and in less than a month - first with Shotgun King, and now with [b]Pawnbarian[/b]. Pawnbarian takes a slightly more stripped-down approach to reworking chess than Shotgun King by mixing roguelike tactics and card game rules with classic chess mechanics. You play as the eponymous Pawnbarian (or one of the other five unlockable characters), trying to clear a set of levels by removing all the enemies. To do this, you'll use cards that allow you to mimic the movements of different chess pieces. You can use up to three cards per turn before the enemies make their move, and you're assigned a new randomly generated hand. The trick, then, is to figure out the optimal way of using your current hand to eliminate as many enemies as possible, or at the very least avoid taking damage from enemy attacks. Of course, this is easier said than done - most enemies will spawn with random modifiers that make them harder to deal with, such as ranged attacks or damage immunity until a certain condition is met. While this adds a layer of excitement and tactical complexity, it can also have unintended side effects. For instance, I remember being soft locked at one point because an enemy had damage immunity unless I was on a space adjacent to it, but it was also nimble, allowing it to move away if I tried to attack. This meant I couldn't attack directly, and had to move to an adjacent field first, just to have the piece move away and become immune to damage again. However, these kinds of interactions aren't all that common. The bigger challenge, as the game goes along, is figuring out how to use your 3-4 cards to deal with multiple enemies and not get stomped on when your turn ends. Luckily, you can use the gold you get by eliminating enemies to buy new cards and health upgrades in between levels. If all of this sounds interesting, getting Pawnbarian at a discount is a pretty good value proposition. Hell, even dishing out the full €8 isn't all that bad for a game with basically infinite replayability. As for me, I'm not really into this kind tactical-card-roguelike-battler, so I can really take it or leave it.
Media

Related
Related
Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
This and every other Pro feature is free until October 20, 2026. A free account is all it takes.
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English, Polish, French, Portuguese - Brazil, Spanish - Spain, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Swedish, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Hungarian +7 more
Hours played at review time, across 58 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Yet another short n small game riffing on general chess vibes and mechanics while still being its own wholly new thing and not really otherwise related to chess in any way. The whole chess thing is really just a starting point for player familiarity with a few game mechanics and I think that makes games that use the chess theme very approachable in a good way (we all know how bishops, rooks and knights move, after all, so when you see those pieces in a game you roughly know what they're going to do even if the context is different), but besides the thematic and moveset relationship to chess it really has nothing in common with its mother game, and I say that while being of the opinion it's very much a good thing! I mean when you think about it, nobody comes to Steam to actually play chess. So really I find that chess-inspired games are wonderful and a whole lot of fun, but games that try to re-invent chess itself tend to be complete garbage. I can very happily report that Pawnbarian is 100% in the camp of just chess-inspired or making use of chess-piece mechanics as a starting point of movesets for a TBT: all that is to say that the Devs have taken inspiration from chess to deliver a really solid little TBT/puzzle adventure experience that has otherwise nothing to do with chess; besides the thematic and piece-moveset overlap, they are two totally different experiences. I've seen more attempts to bring Chess to a more complicated game fail than succeed, so it's nice to see an example that has pulled it off so well. Again I think the reason they pulled it off is that they strictly looked at chess as a source of inspiration, and besides said inspiration they otherwise felt no compulsion or inclination whatsoever to be bound by the wider rules of chess itself. On that note, players shouldn't feel put off or encouraged to play this by virtue of their actual chess experience, if you're really good or bad at chess itself that fact will neither spoiil this game by making it trivial nor spoil it by leaving it too difficult, they're just totally separate things. Also by the way a little public service announcement that the game has very very mild roguelite elements but is absolutely not at all in any way a "roguelike": as always I have NO IDEA why people keep tragging like every random game as a roguelike, I'm convinced that 90% of people have no idea what the term roguelike even means. Anyway, suffice to say this is not in any way a roguelike but it's a very fun chess-inspired turn-based-tactical mini adventure and I can happily recommend it.
like chess but more fun
Brutally difficult turn-based roguelike with puzzle elements based on chess; the cards you play determine your movement direction and range 1:1 with the original classic. Those cards can be augmented with additional skills such as attacking nearby squares or adding shield to absorb additional damage. I'm honestly not very good at it and it can feel like it veers into being a bit unfair, but I greatly appreciate the design that went into adapting such an old game's ruleset.
不清楚,挂的
Very simple roguelike spin on chess. I like it. Easy to get into and a playthrough only takes about 20-40 minutes.
Retooled Chest that isn't as good as chess.
A nice chess based roguelike with interesting mechanics. Lacks a bit of long time motivation, but it's good for what it is :>
норм
juego que similar al ajedrez pero aderezado con nuevas mecánicas
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
Players also reviewed
The games this title's players most often review too — audience affinity.
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $137.7K | 414 | 93% | $17.99 | |
| $137.7K | 435 | 72% | $14.99 | |
| $137.7K | 422 | 91% | $9.74 | |
| $137.8K | 268 | 59% | $16.99 | |
| $137.6K | 696 | 79% | $9.99 | |
| $137.8K | 728 | 86% | $9.99 |
Related
| Game | Estimated lifetime revenue | Reviews | Review score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $514.1K | 762 | 94% | $11.99 | |
| $90K | 168 | 90% | $13.99 | |
| $50.5K |
| 104 |
| 94% |
| $15.99 |
| $36.4K | 180 | 76% | $4.99 |
| $28.6K | 94 | 76% | $14.99 |
| $13.3K | 21 | 71% | $24.99 |