ADVISE THE KING

I loved this one. The gameplay feels very polished, i'm amazed. Great game

gameplay video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ror14Uhfjnc

That's a 5/5 for me, had a lot of fun playing. Graphics are pleasant and I love the sound and simple background change when you are in danger, awesome work!

Very cool. It's 5

Very nice and fun experience. Great work!
I have one nitpick though - the text on the cards could be bigger, would be more pleasant to read (especially the italics).

This is really intresting. a nice spin on chess.

Excellent job! I love chess and this card mechanic fits really nicely into the game. The game changes just enough that it feels familiar and fresh at the same time. You've done excellent work, congrats!

Looks cool, any chance of you uploading a web or mac version?

Yeah this one is really nice. The polish is great and the only things bothering me a little is that it showed a gml crash immediately on opening:

Invalid surface dimensions
at gml_Object_oSystem_Create_0
####################################################################################

stack frame is
gml_Object_oSystem_Create_0 (line -1)

you might want to look into it but the game works normal for me in windowed mode.
It might even be some conflict with my screen setup now that i read the error again (line -1 should not be your fault xD)

Gameplay-wise it is pretty much flawless. Good job!
(I will rate it some time later though cause this is the first game i tested this LD and i want to get some references)

There is nothing I would change about this game. Maybe add a save feature? 5/5

Amazing idea, loved the combination of chess and card game mechanics. The game run smoothly, the UI was very nicely designed and the overall gameplay was really fun albeit slightly easy. The "check" theme really caught me off guard in a positive way. Good job!

Thank you all for the amazing feedback so far!

@blackmoodgames Thanks for posting a video! That was great to be able to watch and hear your thoughts in "real time"

@fabula-rasa Thanks for the feedback! I suppose you're right that it could be pretty small depending on your monitor size/resolution, etc. Good to know! Thanks.

@david-bohan That's great to hear! I'm personally not much of a chess player, so I'm glad I was able to "do it justice." Thanks for the feedback on the level flow.

@cobear25 I do intend to upload a mac version. I'd have done it by now, but I'm having some technical account issues and am waiting to hear back from the staff behind GameMaker. If I'm able to get it taken care of, I'll let you know when the mac version is up.

@willoxs A line -1 crash? lol. WEIRD. Do you have an unusual screen setup?

@Arden I use a resolution on my main screen that isn't intended from the monitor so this could be the problem^^

@willoxs, ah okay, good to know! Thanks!

Fantastically clever game, and very well made for the short time it was created in. Very polished. This is the first game in LD46 to receive only top marks from me :) Everything was intuitive, well made, polished and most importantly - fun!

A very interesting look at chess! I really liked how the complexity grew with each round. I think I will play these chess more than once. Keep it up!

It's like a simplified singeplayer Onitama. I love Onitama. Excellent sprite work, animation, and good sound design.

This was very fun and cool, generally an awesome take on two games mushed into one!

@treska, I haven't heard of Onitama! I'll have to check it out!

@jacksendary I found the knight bug that got you killed. It was a pretty rare circumstance where a knight would jump right over you and be counted as an attack. oops.
The fixed version is up now, so if you want to give the game another shot later on, I definitely recommend downloading again!

Thanks!

This is really great! Super impressive and polished for a jam game!

Some feedback if you're planning further development: I found the energy restriction thing a bit limiting here? It essentially meant that you had three small moves or one small move and one big move per turn, which made it feel a bit samey and kind of slow. Would be interested in trying a version with a more chess like move set: one turn to one turn, with cards being dealt in some sort of way that you could make plans for future moves (e.g. maybe don't clear your hand between turns). That would also let you maybe do stuff with cards that e.g. charged up to give more moves on future turns, or weird move types, or cards that are effective in sequence - 1 to charge up, 2 to break armour, 3 to do a huge area of effect attack or whatever

The cards that gave you one free diagonal move felt like a good way to break the mold! Would love to see more things like that - e.g. cards with interesting, situational restrictions.

Would love to see more stuff that thinks about positioning too - I know you're kinda tied to the chess theme in a way, but it feels like this game might be more fun on a smaller grid - e.g. a 5x5, or with tiles that had interesting effects (gain energy, block attacks, etc). (I guess the missing gaps in the later levels indicate that you have things like that planned!)

Anyway, I thought this was great - nice work! :thumbsup:

@terry Thanks for the in-depth feedback!

I agree with a lot of what you're saying here. Playing with both energy limitations and being able to plan out further than one turn at a time would be a natural addition. If I had time, the next card I was thinking of was:

"**Castle** -- *Draw one card. Place on card on top of your draw pile."* That alone I think would change the game quite a bit.

My original "mental image" of AtK actually didn't even take place on a standard chess board -- that was just my starting point, and all I could manage to get to after obsessing over card interactions and piece pathfinding for the first two days. 😅 Adding holes to the board was my compromise. Haha. I like the idea of unique tiles that provide passive effects if you're on them!

I'm not sure what my further development plans are quite yet, since LD was more just a break from a bigger project. But feel free to follow my itch page or twitter if you'd like to keep up!

Hi there! I played your game on-stream last night. I think you may recall that I had very little to critique about it - a very impressive submission!

It's unique, fun, juicy, satisfying - you've included a delightful amount of features in such a short amount of time (I was particularly giddy about finding out I could zoom and pan the game board).

If I had to find something to criticize; might be a bit of a *stretch* for fitting the theme? :shrug:

Honestly, this one clicked for me and I don't have much to criticize about it. I am excited to play more!

Thanks so much @walkalope! It was really fun watching you experience it!
If you get the chance to finish it, I'd love any more specific ideas of what changes or additions you might like to see!

Really great submission! I'm incredibly impressed with the amount of polish in the visuals, music/sound design, and the game in general given the time constraints.

The concept is really interesting, but I think (entirely understandably due to being made in 3 days) it wasn't really expanded upon enough to really "click".

One of the things that makes deckbuilders shine is finding interesting interactions and synergies between cards, which leads to being able to build different deck archetypes each time. That feels kinda absent here - card effects were pretty much independent of each other, and the only consideration I made as to how to build my deck was making sure I didn't have an unhealthy proportion of 2-energy cards. This also meant that decision-making was on a per-turn basis - I mostly only ever had to think about what to do with a particular hand, rather than thinking about future turns and the status of my entire deck.

I think a few simple card- or energy-management cards would get you a lot of bang for your buck in order to help with this. Cards that modify (or have conditional effects based on) your next action would be cool too and have a lot of potential - for instance, something like "If your next move captures a piece, draw 2 cards" would be nice. I noticed you requested card ideas, and I think this is a really fascinating game concept, so there's a good chance I'll brainstorm some and drop 'em in there.

Very good submission! very polished, fun to play, works well. I liked the game and was impressed overall by it!
I'm surprised i'm having a hard time elaborate, but I think it's just a good game.

I faced a bug that made me loose the mouse (it disappeared, it happened twice) but I persevered because I was that interested. It was cool to learn it was procedurally generated (after the fact) I was impressed by the levels and thought it was all hand made.
Progression was nice but I'll admit, as long as you have infinte time to think, it's rather hard to fail. I know people hate timers but I think it could do much for the challenge.

I agree, with the feedback above, but as far as a jam entry goes, what you had was more than necessary. know that it has much potential though!

As an aside, Couldn't help but notice you're a fellow GM user, would love to discuss how you went about things some time. if you're interested.

With that said, amazing job, great game!

@empty-set That's all really great feedback. Thank you for the suggestions and insight! I honestly hadn't thought about cards through a synergy perspective during the jam, and was just trying to get the basics thrown in. I could tell "something was missing" that was too far down my checklist to get to, but the synergy lense and provided examples are really helpful. Thank you!

@joh Ah, so that cursor bug is still in there somewhere. I found it right before submission, and thought I squashed it, but I couldn't figure out how to re-produce it. SO WEIRD. Thanks for your feedback! And yeah, I'd love to chat about GM implementation. Feel free to find me on Discord or Twitter and we can get linked up. Info is in my bio.

I LOVE this game. It feels smooth and looks great, and there's so much detail. You can tell a lot of work went into this for only a weekend! Thank you so much for making this :)

Feels very polished, great work!

Observations while playing the game:
- Your itch.io page looks super professional, especially for a jam game. Wow.
- I don't know why you're offering me 3 copies of Pitchfork when I can only take one after all.
- Wow, this game feels good to play. The polish is on a whole other level. How did you have enough time to do all of that?
- The contrast between the pieces and the ground seems a bit low, but apart from that, I'm really digging the art.
- Sfx and music are super on point. Especially the "You are in danger!" cue.
- Although... not sure if the "You are in danger!" cue at the *beginning* of my turn is needed, because unlike in Chess, I am sure to move my King every turn anyway. Being in danger at the beginning of my turn doesn't mean much to me here and won't change my gameplay in the slightest; I just have to be careful not to *end* in a dangerous position.
- It does feel a bit samey after a bit, to be honest. And I never really felt like the game was particularly challenging.
- The game sometimes hid the mouse cursor until the next level? Super weird. I mean, after almost three decades of using computers, I can still mostly use my mouse without a cursor and the occasional highlight is enough, but... :D
- I won. Yay!
- ...wait, you did ALL of this by yourself? Inside of 72 hours? Woah.

This is a really nice concept and I'm sure you could do even more with it!

Wow this is freaking incredible! Really great in everything. Definetly winning potential. I love the music too

@tobiasw Thanks for your thoughts! It's always helpful to get "stream-of-consciousness" feedback from new players!
I appreciate your feedback! I'll take it into consideration for any potential future updates!

Hi there! Loved playing this one feels super polished and it feel extremely tight for a jam game. Here are some notes I took while playing it.

- Overall it doesn't feel like I'm making too many meaningful decisions (specially on the early levels). Seems like there aren't many ways I can screw up. I can play in a way that's far from optimal and still progress. Also, when I pick card upgrades, I usually get lots of cards to choose from but, in most cases, my decisions weren't shapping my deck a lot.
- The levels seem a bit too big. To feel in danger I usually have to be sorrounded by a large amount of enemies.
- It'd be super nicel to see where all the enemies are moving with one button/command (right now you have to put your mouse over each one and this is a bit frustrating in later levels).
- I thought the "danger music" was too jarring.

These are some small notes. I enjoyed the game and I'd be interesting in a bigger version. Good job!