Fantastic game! Slight performance issues had it lagging but was fun.

This game is masterpiece for me! I'm really impressed! Nothing to add.

Nice game, my high score is: Wave 63, Power: 30, ELO 2114, Title Expert!

I love the music, it is very cool. The only thing is that it is not exactly made for looping from the start, when it loops that is a harsh cut in the mood. But still great music, fits the game play very well.

I like your idea and implementation of the Bullet Hell Chess, very nice!

The graphics are minimalistic but well done, the screen does not look or feel overwhelming even when cluttered with chess pieces. My only slight complaint is that the yellow of the power ups and the green of the indistructible chess pieces are too similar. It is hard to distinguish the weakly blinking yellow from the green.

As mentioned in another comment, mouse input lags behind a couple of frames. But after a bit you get a feel for it and then it still works so no big problem.

Overall a cool idea and very solid implementation, great job!

Really fun game, little welcome bits of humor (algebraic notation, ELO rating haha), it was pretty fun avoiding all these waves. Didn't had input lags or performance issues. Good job !

Haha this game is super fun! Love the score stuff at the end too.

Just a minor point, but I did find the green enemies confusing, since green normally means to me that it's a good thing.

Overall great game!

I love the vibrant, energetic vibe this game gives off. The constant barrage of enemies combined with the upbeat music kept me pumped and ready for more. Shaping the weapons and enemies like chess pieces was an excellent way of communicating their function. Since I already know how a knight moves in chess, I can immediately tell how the knight moves in this game and don't have to memorize its pattern. My one criticism would be that the power-up is also shaped like a chess piece, so I initially thought it was an enemy to be avoided. Later, when green, invincible enemies were introduced, I assumed they were power-ups as well and got killed without warning. Having some clearer way of distinguishing between friend and foe could have saved me some trial and error, but, overall, that didn't detract much from my enjoyment. Excellent work!

Great entry - very polished and instantly playable! I had to take a phone call, and didn't realize I'd started a new game. The mouse sitting on it's own on the edge of the screen got further than I could when I was trying my hardest! (I got a higher score though ;) )

The chess theme is original, and the graphics are simplistic but punchy. The sounds work very well too! Didn't really get that I was supposed to grab the flashy ones at first, but I figured it out quickly enough. Nice game!

Amazing! gameplay is really good

You did a great job mixing the two themes, with how the enemies move like their chess counterparts. The simplistic visuals and audio also complement the game nicely. Nice work!

At first I thought the chess theme was just in the graphics, but the upgrades! That is so clever!

I like the fast pace and the use of the chess on every aspect of the game. It's a really enjoyable game!

Nice shooter but I don't get the chess aspect as it's more about the graphics rather than combining the gameplay of chess.

Very fun game, graphics are nice, sound is pretty good and even if you didn't use the theme in game-play it's very well appreciated in design, the pieces movement patterns, the king using other chess pieces to save himself and having only one life is pretty much chess. Overall good job.

Great fun. Instantly understood what was happening and what I had to do. The concept works really well as a game. I liked the little touch at the end of dressing up the score as an ELO rating. Really enjoyed myself. Good stuff :8ball:

You made a FANTASTIC shooter! ... and a pretty crappy Chess game. While I do see how you were trying to incorporate the movements of the Chess pieces into your game, there was no element of strategy that typically comes with Chess. Still, the game was extremely fun, and that's the most important part!

Quite a fun game!

Wish you'd have done a bit more to make the mechanics more interesting.

Otherwise, very enjoyable: good graphics and music for a compo game!

Thanks for the great feedback everyone!

@Brent This is actually the first game I made into HTML5, which could have something to do with the performance. I also didn't spend any time optimizing, I just used some "best practices" that i've used for mobile dev. Deffinetly a learning experience. Next time I'll have HTML5 in mind.

@Serious07 I think it has some opportunities tho ;)

@gonutz Yeah, I haven't really learned to loop music perfectly yet, but I also could have composed it a little better to help the flow/loop. I also had an idea of how to help distinguish the gold pawn from enemy pawns. I had it glowing in a circle at one point, but just didn't go through with it. I should have though. The mouse lag has more to do with design, I didn't want it to be 1-1 with the player's mouse speed, and also had some ideas of maybe leveling up movement speed though power ups.

@zoglu I kind of got lucky with the equation that determined the elo score, it seemed to work pretty much with the first try. I was afraid I would have to tweek it a bunch of times to get it where I thought it should be.

@Potondo & @superpokeunicorn I thought about this problem too. I had those green enemies as red at first, but didn't like how they looked with the blue background, so I went with green hoping the player would understand to avoid them. I guess the gold pawn kind of makes things even more confusing. I think a simple way to solve this would have been to use the black bars on the side of the board to explain the gold pawn was a power up, and everything else as enemies. Kind of like how an arcade cabinet explains controls and point systems and such.

@mrspeaker haha, I had some times I let it run for a few waves to see how long I would survive (in the middle of the screen). I figured this was a safe way for the player learn. I considered having enemies that directly attack or shoot bullets so you couldn't sit in one spot, but decided against it.

@TheMadPangolin Thanks, I should have done a better job conveying the power up's difference from the enemies.


@blubberquark @CaptainPilot @FabianLC @Willops @Sintel
Yeah the theme of mixing 2 incompatible genres was challenging. I struggled with the idea of trying too hard to make something "incompatible" actually compatible. I felt like there was enough ambiguity about the theme that simply applying some basic elements of chess into a shooter; the main things being the pieces and their movement, would fulfill the theme's requirements.

At the end of the day, I decided to take the safe route and make something I knew would be fun/good, and something I knew I could make within the timeframe, rather than experiment with mashing game mechanics together or trying to reinvent a wheel, and potentially not finish, or be unhappy with the result.

I knew it was a safe choice, and being my first game jam game, I think I made the right decision. I think I'll be more willing to take an experimental risk next time! Thanks for the feedback!

Oh I see, having speed be changed by power ups is a nice idea I think, if you make it clear to the player, people will not question the lag. This could make for some interesting mechanic :-)