The Rookery

Game is pleasant. Pwn many a peasant. Works as intended. Recommended.

Very nice chess variant

Received this as part of a chess-themed Humble Bundle and I think it is the best of the bunch. There are plenty of boosts/relics that (if you pay attention) can make the runs very manageable, but still challenging. Hits the narrow band (for me) of frustrating enough to be annoyed when losing a run, yet entertaining enough to want to try again.

There are a couple of these chess-roguelike-ish ideas out there and this one's my favorite.

Not a bad chess-roguelike mix, however it does get boring quite quickly mainly because the chess board gets cluttered in a way that is not always fun and challenging, but rather tidieous. In overall I would still recommend the game as it has its fun moments that align well with the pricetag. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7279488-One-Grumpy-Russian]One Grumpy Russian[/url] 6.5/10 - If Kasparov could move his Rook like a bishop, DeepBlue woul've never won

Its quite the fun experience, but with some drawbacks I would like improved on - The turn timer feels pretty restrictive for the ways to play the game. I mostly avoid leaning heavy on pawns, because they tend to not win games fast. - Energy generation and energy consumption can easily be unbalance during a run. Sometimes you end with a lot of energy, but dont have powerful effects to spend it on, other times you got a couple strong relics and boosts, but are severely starved for energy. Worse than that, lots of relics auto activate and eat your precious energy preventing you from getting reinforcements. - Doesnt feel that much like deck building, but more like grabbing whatever is useful. With only 15 reward screens the rolls are more volatile than in usual rougelikes. - Checkmating Draco is such a hassle, especially with the heart shield. - AI is utterly defenseless against some relics (like devastating draco with laser eyes), but I get it, AI is hard. At the end of the day, i had some real fun with all the creative ideas in this game.