This is super dope! The embed on this page is busted but the itch page works great!

Excellent concept I can definitely see how this can be further developed! A little hard to tell the checkers apart when they have 1 vs 2 stacked atop each other. The height difference is very subtle. I wish it ramped up the difficulty a bit faster I was a little bored with the basics.

@bonemane Thanks! The LD website still struggles with Godot 4 HTML5 embeddings unfortunately, had no luck debugging it last night.

Glad to hear that the itch version works for you!

@mrventures Thanks! I'd intended to go back and refine the checkers models (they are simple MeshInstance3Ds created right at the start, the chess pieces are proper glfs) but was limited by time! Hopefully they're easy to tell apart when selected (as kinged checker pieces can move backwards).

Balancing the difficulty is something that's always super hard with game jams. In the end I put three super easy levels at the start to allow players to earn points they can use in the much harder levels (e.g. level 7 is vs. four queens). You can also jump right in at level 3, as that's after the tutorial levels.

You can also try jumping straight to those later levels, but you'll start with no points!

This was a very interesting take on the classic board games. I never thought about how chess and checkers would be combined, but now I know! It was enjoyable. I could see this expanding into something really fun. It wasn't obvious that clicking the points was how you summon, but after figuring that out it was a lot more fun. Nice work!

@pres2300 Thanks! I had the same thought post-submission about whether people would find the summon shop. It would definitely be the first thing I improve in any future updates.

Who doesnt love chess variants. Grat work :)

A great idea, though as has been mentioned I did feel it dragged on a bit at times. Not so much because of the difficulty I think (I appreciate how it starts easy and gets gradually more difficult), but sometimes it takes a lot of moves to reach an opponent piece. It probably didn't help that I also didn't notice how to summon more pieces initially, it was definitely more fun with that ability.

The funny opponent descriptions were a nice detail :)

I probably found a glitch, I tried playing the last level (from the level select), and the opponent resigned very quickly.

Very fun!
The potential strategies and emergent gameplay is inspired, perhaps this calls for a roguelike version of this concept? The AI is not the best at chess/checkers and neither am I thankfully. Still very impressive, it runs great and looks quite nifty to boot.
Love that you were able to add sounds effects with options and all, they're important details too!

I was a bit bad at reading the instructions so until the 6th level I had completely ignored the summon button. That is probably on me but maybe making it a bit more obvious in the UI would be good?
Well done anyhow!

The game is super! I really like this format! There were the same thoughts on the theme.

Really cool concept, I want to play it with my friends ! I think it's missing a little bit of instructions

This was really fun! I chuckled at several of the opponent names and descriptions, especially the bishops. I know this is a contentious rule in the hardcore checkers community, but being able to jump your own pieces for greater movement options would have really been cool, especially since you were up against greater and greater odds.

My biggest complaint is that the enemy AI seemed pretty random a lot of the time. Often I would just charge recklessly into danger without getting my pieces captured, and this aggressive strategy worked a lot better than playing passively.

I used the level select to try Level 9 several times, but was not nearly good enough to beat it.

On my best honest attempt, I made it to level 5:


Now this is a very interesting way to take the theme of summoning, combining the simple gameplay of chess, checkers and the summoning aspect, to a degree I wish the levels had you start with X points and you have to use those but the way it is set up now is a skill check on it's own which is also pretty neat, overall no complaints really fun game!

I like it, not sure what I can say that hasn't already but it was very nice, I certainly know I would never be able to code this myself. Great job and good luck on all your future projects.

I really like the mixing of Checkers and Chess !
Some board are really hard, but this is a bit compensated by the AI that sometime do some stupid move ahah
nice entry overall :)

@locksmitharmy @bassilij @dams333 @stellarnightmare @magnat Thanks for the kind words!

@vasco-freitas I agree that the summon button needs to be a lot clearer, without it you're missing half the game. Thanks for flagging up the early resign bug, I've spotted it before but wasn't able to pin down the cause in time.

@arkadia-5 Definitely agree on the potential for a roguelike spin, I'd initially intended for players to keep and upgrade one team throughout the levels, but ran out of time to fully implement it.

@andrewkennedy Day one of the jam was me discovering more and more edge rules for checkers, but I've not heard of jumping your own pieces before. Definitely something I'd look into for any future development. The AI probably feels random because it mostly currently is, there's some prioritisation for attacks rather than moves but no weighting based on piece type or context. Great job getting to level 5! If you want to beat level 9, I suggest starting at level 8 (which is a basic checkers layout) and using that to farm points for summons in level 9.

@stmate03 I like the idea of each level starting with a certain number of points. Currently you get points for completing levels instead to encourage people to pay all the levels as a campaign, but I wanted to make sure that people could jump into and check out random levels for the jam. Thanks for the feedback!

I played through the first few levels not quite realising the summon mechanic, until the level with the knights where I (foolishly) blew my entire budget on a queen, not realising it wouldn't carry over to the next level. Turns out taking on bishops with checker pieces is not the easiest lol.

I think a seperate summon button from the score would make the UI a bit clearer.

Other than that, everything worked fine and the idea is nice.

@argensis Totally agree on the need for a separate summon button. It's also a shame that I didn't get enough time to allow the teams to carry over, ideally I wanted to have a proper between-rounds team customisation screen and team placement at the start of each round. I also share your pain re. the checkers vs. bishops match-up!

very good code , wish for more detail or content of this game

This was lots of fun. Levels work well. Liked the music loop.

Interesting combination. I also like how pressuring the music is. Didn't understand how you summon pieces until I read it from the comments.

Good job!

@olddog @harmadillo @coderaurus Thanks for the kind words!

Cool game. It was surprising to see how well those two games mix. Like others, I didn't notice that I could summon pieces until the bishop round wend on forever (on white squares when my checkers are on black). Much funner when I realized that. Magnum also resigned against me, even though I was certain I would lose.

Nice clean interface. Funny opponents.

This is very well done! I can't believe where you began balancing this. The gameplay is solid and fun to play. Very innovative also! I liked the descriptions of the opponent also, very funny it times :laughing: The music was a bit "jaws-like", which matched the vibe this game was going for I think: hunting down chesspieces!

@pincushion Thanks for the kind words!

@wouter52 Honestly, balancing the levels and pieces involved some luck and hoping for the best..! And I'm glad you enjoyed the audio, I rushed that together with limited ability - so I'm just glad it's not too awful!

Had a ton of fun playing this. Cool idea, good level variation, and the difficulty ramped up well.

Failed a few times, but eventually made it to the end.

Found it really relaxing for some reason..

Great twist on the theme, very interesting combination of chess and checkers for sure. CHESCKERS!

A neat game, congrats!

Such an awesome twist on chess! I feel that some of the pieces were too expensive, it would be cheaper for example to buy a rook + bishop than to buy a queen, which doesn’t feel right. It’d also be really awesome to have a leaderboard based off how much money is left over by the end of the game, as a way to quantify how well you did :heart:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2123757357

The game is very addictive and made me remember my childhood when I played chess, but apart from how the horse moves, I don’t remember anything else :D I didn’t immediately guess about the summon button, with its help all the enemy pieces cried! Great game, thanks!

Nice idea!
At first it felt weird, being in a such extreme disadvantage, even with the very generous AI... then I realised i could buy pieces by clicking on the points. The whole time I made it more difficult than it is by thinking "the piece summoning part seems to come later".

With that figured out, it wasn't really difficult anymore. Most of the time 1-2 cheap pieces were enough, and cheesing the AI until it made something dumb / gave up. However with a better AI some of the challenges would be never ending, as for example with the rooks the AI could outrun your pieces forever or make it very expensive for you to force the last rook into being taken, resulting in frustrating gameplay.

So while I think this idea has potential, it still needs refining!

Really great work! I loved the concept of mixing chess, checkers, and summoning pieces to the board. Luckily for me the AI wasn't too smart as I made some DUMB moves :smile: With some work this could be a full release! Keep on making games!

This was fun :D I like how the levels were designed (I think?) to make you try out summoning once you get to the level with the bishops. The idea feels flexible and deep enough for trying out some interesting twists, although balancing the difficulty might be a challenge. Great job!

Interesting hybrid game. Well done!

This is a pretty fun game! Hope the post jam goes well

Thank you for submitting! The idea is interesting, maybe there is more than can be done with it!

the descriptions for all of the different opponents are hilarious!

Thanks for everyone for their awesome feedback, I'm super pleased to break the top 100 for both fun and innovation!

The post-jam version (featuring custom matches, a smarter AI, and enhanced visuals) can now be played on [itch](https://mattravenhall.itch.io/summoners-chess)

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