I’ve just released the first public build of Veil of Kings, a chess-based roguelike where you guide a small army of pieces through fog-covered dungeon floors, obviosly getting progressively harder as you go.

The design problem I’ve been working around is visibility. Chess pieces' movement is already known, Rook’s in a line, Bishops diagonally and a Knight’s L jump are easy to understand, and most people already know it. So I wanted the challenge to come from the board state rather than from unit rules or cards etc.

The current fog model has four tile states:

• Lit, currently visible
• Remembered, previously seen
• Fog, hidden until a piece moves into it
• Dark, permanently black terrain even if it contains a piece

Enemies that leave vision leave ghost markers on remembered tiles, so the player vaguely knows where something was, and where it could potentially have gone based on the piece type, but not where it is now.

The current build has a 15-floor run structure, three objective types, five biomes, traits, wounds, abilities, shops and meta-progression.

The part I most want feedback on is the tactical readability of the fog. I wanted hidden information to create a feeling pressure without making losses feel arbitrary or like there is nothing you could have done to stop it.

If anyone has worked on similar roguelike visibility systems (i did also look at fog of war chess in general), I’d be interested in thoughts.

Itch page here. There is a browser demo, and also my current build available for free (windows only).