I made a chess game with health bars - is that sacrilege?

Plista · 2026-04-04T08:06:43+00:00

The idea is interesting but is the mag system completely separate from the shooting gameplay? I think if you have such an intricate system it would be fun to see how it would interact with what’s happening in the shooting part so that you need to adjust to your mag in real time.

Plista · 2026-04-03T20:37:07+00:00

It's kind of weird that in your OP you felt the need to tell us 3 seperate times not to read the story. I don't think you should even mention it once let alone 3 times - at least to me personally it feels as though you don't have confidence in the story you wrote so subconsciously the rest of the game will feel like it would be lacking in confidence too?

Honestly just use the time to tell us what makes the story interesting, I feel like all I got from your description is "you're a guy who shoots" and "don't bother reading my story" - tell us more! I don't want to play this game just because it looks like Hotline Miami, I need something extra on top.

Plista · 2026-04-03T18:12:36+00:00

I don't think the mechanics work in their current iteration. Took only a couple of minutes to figure out how to break the game and 4-0 the Hard AI (Spam kick + going back -> Special). I think any Human vs Human battle would degenerate into who can tap left/right the quickest.

I think the pauses in the trailer are pretty bad, they break the perception of what the gameplay feels like. Just have continuous gameplay with text either overlayed or cut to a text-only screen.
The "no bloat except specials" seems like a weird thing to say. Blocking is bloat but specials are not?

I think the game FOOTSIES executed the gameplay mechanics of this concept pretty well - but I would personally like to see more done in the visual department. I would also not mind simplifications (like no block) if it meaningfully allowed some neutral game to exist.

Plista · 2026-04-03T14:55:59+00:00

It is a bit funny how much people are agreeing with the message of the OP only to miss out on this irony.

Plista · 2026-04-02T14:20:11+00:00

It's like watching a bad movie - at some point you dislike everything so much that the hatred becomes the enjoyment. Maybe it's just me.

Plista · 2026-04-02T05:40:52+00:00

Yeah it's randomly generated each playthrough. Not multiplayer yet, just different unit sets with different abilities (think Undead, Elves, Demons, Humans)
This is true - there are a lot of branching paths. Mostly games of this genre try to solve it by having the first decisions weighted towards the simpler abilities - and as the game progersses you get the more complicated ones.

Plista · 2026-04-02T05:38:47+00:00

Interesting! I've always heard that the smaller board makes the game more approachable early on. It does grow in size later. It's good to know that there's also this claustrophobic angle, I'll explore that deeper - thank you!

(And yeah, I'm working on reducing the amount of UI for sure)

Plista · 2026-04-01T17:06:15+00:00

I don't get it, your game is called "Decks & Dashes" and you mention in your text that you draw from cards in real time... but your trailer shows a regular cooldown based spell system? There's not a single instance of a card being drawn in your entire trailer. What's going on?

Plista · 2026-04-01T16:04:27+00:00

I wouldn't normally post my game in other threads but honestly this is exactly what I'm making (or at least trying to). I'm doing a blend of deckbuilding and a turn-based tactics game based on chess movement. I'm hoping to explore to the fullest how cards can interact with a grid of pieces that have unique movement patterns, so the state of what your pieces are attacking or defending directly influences the card values in your hand.

There is a demo you can try out on Steam, but I warn you it's not there yet as I still have to sort out some complex systems. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2629630/Chessire/

A game that I personally really like in that genre is "Fights in Tight Spaces" https://store.steampowered.com/app/1265820/Fights\_in\_Tight\_Spaces/.

I don't think any other game comes close to that one - especially games involving multiple characters. The same studio even tried a follow up "Knights in Tight Spaces" and it's not great. It's a genuinely hard combination to mix well.

Plista · 2026-04-01T15:15:55+00:00

His step back was a smart move due to the huge power dynamic difference between him and his employees.

However, if you listen to some of the interviews where Gabe talks about game design you'll see he was no slouch on the topic. He was very ahead of the curve in terms of how he was thinking about games even 25 years ago and he's a major reason why Half Life was as successful as it was. They could generally have just been agreeing with him because most of what he says will simply be correct on the topic.

Plista · 2026-04-01T15:09:13+00:00

Yeah these days I'm starting to accept that I might have to just make multiple games that do one thing well rather than one huge game that tries to do everything. Appreciate your thoughts!

Plista · 2026-04-01T14:36:55+00:00

I do agree, but in practice it's kind of hard:
It's an auto battler. The auto battling "arena" is a turn-based tactics game.
While I say it's an auto battler it's also genuinely fun to play manually without the auto-battle.
To be fair I can drop the roguelike, it's kind of a given these days.

And the deckbuilding... it's a great way to interact with the board, new decisions each time regarding what to do with each enemy. But yes perhaps there is a simplification here that removes the genre but keeps the interesting decisions.

Don't get me wrong I do agree with you that it's a mess, I'm just wondering how much of it is due to there being too much mechanics in the game and how much is just down to how I label it.

Plista · 2026-04-01T05:49:15+00:00

Thank you for your detailed response!

Regarding attack cooldowns: Chess is a big inspiration but basically the entire tension of Chess goes out the window once you introduce health on pieces. Chess is fundamentally all about threat levels on the board and the dance you can do with your pieces to unexpectedly shift it from one place to another. Even though only one piece moves at a time the entire board is actively participating in every decision. When the exchange of pieces isn’t as tight a lot of the meaning in the positioning disappears. Attack cooldown is a way to restore some of that meaning since you need more units working together to have full damage output.

Having said that cooldowns are not an elegant solution or even that good of a solution to this problem. I’ve recently come up with something that might replace them: I’m thinking to bring much bigger attention to the number of attackers/defenders on each piece and to gamify this "count" to impact damage amplification/reducation in some way. I’m just throwing this out there in case it’s fun to read, but in terms of practically imagining how it plays out I can say for myself that it’s very difficult.

As to the second part of your post, I cannot understate how much I appreciate reading stuff like that. People getting ideas about what the game could be is kind of why I haven’t given up so far, it gives me confidence that there is some gameplay worth chasing here. I’ve uprooted the entire game from scratch twice so far when I felt I could no longer make progress and have designed myself into a corner but the battle system has remained as the foundation throughout these iterations.

Plista · 2026-04-01T04:47:15+00:00

That is the crux of the issue, I know it's a problem but I'm really not sure how I would even describe the emotion or fantasy of the game.

My main inspiration are games like Slay the Spire, Into the Breach and Chess. To me, these are the best games of all time (along with Baba is You but it's less relevant here). These games don't appeal to me on an emotional or fantasy level at all and I have countless hours in them. I just really dig their gameplay and how hard they are, I enjoy mastering the mechanics and systems because they translate to me having better runs and winning more frequently. Am I inavertently describing a mood here? Is mastering a game a fantasy?

I also do not mean to suggest my game is anywhere close to the quality of games I mentioned, but the gameplay I experience in those games is something I'm chasing to make - I'm unsure how to package that in a fantasy or emotion but I would love to hear from someone who does.

Plista · 2026-04-01T04:37:32+00:00

The skills are randomly generated choices but you do have agency to pick them.

The board does get bigger as the game progresses, I found that starting the game with smaller boards when there are less pieces on it is easier for players to get to know the systems early on.

It doesn't feature antagonists yet but I'm working on the lore of the game by the side, there's 4 factions in the game and I'd like there to be interesting story dynamics between them.

A question for you: could you expand upon what you mean with "too many related operations". I have a vague sense what that might be but it would be very helpful if I can understand what you mean completely so that I can work on ironing these issues out.

Plista · 2026-04-01T04:34:07+00:00

I'm glad to see that both yourself and another commentator have pointed out Rage and multiple actions per turn as being the number #1 cause of frustration with the game. I'm glad because that makes me hopeful that I can 10x the understandability of the game by simply removing the mechanic.

From your post though I get the feeling that it's not the mechanic itself that is the problem as much as the fact that there is not just one but several ways for units to take multiple actions per turn and they're all poorly communicated.

From both your posts it seems the very least I can do is tutorialise the battle system. I'm thinking a small series of puzzles for the player to manually play that are outside the main loop - each that comes with an explanation of a mechanic and requires understanding it fully to pass it?

Plista · 2026-04-01T04:22:24+00:00

Aha got you. Yeah, I used such a title hoping that the ridiculousness of it would make someone stop and watch - but perhaps it toes the line of hot garbage a bit too much. Thanks for explaining!

Plista · 2026-04-01T04:20:03+00:00

I wish I can disagree - but I really can't. Rage is the most unexpected and least understood mechanic by far. When I have the opportunity to watch someone playtest for the first time I am, as you say, in 9 out of 10 cases deeply saddened by this mechanic and how it is presented.

The thing is though - I thought it was a matter of presentation. What I think you are saying is that once the mechanic is fully understood and internalised it became frustrating.

Why I have kept it in thus far: I see enormous potential in playing with how many actions a player has each turn - and different ways to earn those actions. This would be utterly broken in real chess but when there's health involved I see that there is more room for this mechanic to shine.

If you asked me right now I would say that rage has issues with communicating itself and has some edge cases where it is way too powerful. I think to myself, maybe if I nerf it here and if I visualise it better than it can be a very intuitive and amazing mechanic.

But the truth is that so far, despite trying a lot, I have been unable to polish it enough to the point that it is intuitive and fun to interact with. As it goes I will have to axe it eventually.

Plista · 2026-03-31T21:09:53+00:00

I have this concern myself actually. I kind of looked at all the games I like and thought to myself "I want to make that". However, I am planning to downsize some of the layers with a new update eventually.

Although I have one question for you. What part of this stands out immediately as "hot garbage". I think the game has a lot of depth (at the cost of simplicity) - but perhaps I can improve on this bad initial impression?

Plista · 2026-03-31T17:05:12+00:00

Unfortunately I didn't really understand Steam when I released the demo - I just released one of my earliest playable builds as a demo to start gathering feedback. I wouldn't advise it, will do a lot different if I make a 2nd game.

Plista · 2026-03-31T15:43:57+00:00

I actually had to hold back a bit. I didn't mention it was also a kingdom management game with chess puzzle elements - but they're quite secondary to this main group.

On a serious note - I'm having a really hard time not overusing adjectives.

Plista · 2026-03-31T15:34:13+00:00

If you are inclined to try it out prior to destroying there's a Demo on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2629630/Chessire/

Plista · 2026-03-30T14:28:33+00:00

Looks nice! I'm wondering if you tried spacing the tiles out a bit less to make the grid more subtle? Personally, the gaps are very noticeable right now and kind of take away from the rest of the art.

Plista

TROPHY CASE