Rooklite

Игра мне очень понравилась, я не гроссмейстер в шахматах, и из-за этого игра ещё прикольнее, жду полного релиза

I went into a match with only my king and got soft locked since i couldn't start it

i dont understand the pages, like what does "turn to 88 (50%)" mean?

i assume the timer ticking sound on the x moves left challenges is a bug, right?

Hey Elias! Rooklite made our Oct 17 Vibe1Up drop. A knight crossing a chessboard map where every rival camp is a half-board the camera dives into is such a neat idea. If it helps the Steam push, there's a free "Featured on Vibe1Up" badge for the page: just search Rooklite on vibe1up.com and click "Get a Featured on Vibe1Up badge" on its page.

Are pieces with a shield meant to die when they take a piece with gunpowder? If so, it should be clearly stated

my pawn isn't pawning

The turn the board action in the copy the board challenge should say clockwise or anticlockwise, left or right is unclear. 

A bit of balance commentary:

• Shields are broken. This goes both ways:
  • Kings should be able to kill shielded units. I lost to a boss without a chance because it had a shielded queen in a position I couldn't defend all checks.
  • Likewise you can checkmate easily with shielded units, most notoriously a knight that also moves like a king can usually checkmate on its own.
  • Verve is also insanely strong. Even if it only trigged once it'd be broken. Triggering multiple times usually means you can just clean up the enemy army with a single rook or royal knight
  • The one shielding everything at the start of battle is also insane. It would be great even if it only shielded the king. The downside is also just an upside. Bonus power because it actually applies in the mate in X puzzles

• Knights getting to move like kings is by far the strongest upgrade in the game. King moves are awesome. And no piece profits as much from this as knights. This would be a much more suitable upgrade for bishops so they're no longer colour locked.
• In comparison, most bishop & pawn upgrades are just bad. Mainly because of numbers. They need a lot of pawns on the board to do anything a knight or rook can't do from the start.
  • Turning bishops into mini knights would be strong but not too strong because the board is so small (or at least not nearly as strong as royal knights). Doing it only with pawns is basically a nothing burger because there just aren't enough pawns for it to matter.
  • Bishops are also just bad from the get-go for that reason. Worse than vanilla chess because they have much less space.
  • Pawns are weak. Giving them the worst movement upgrades in the game would make sense if there was a lot of them but the summoning options just don't keep up.
  • The same thing goes for the defence upgrades. They sound cool on paper but getting 3 pawns in the first place is a task. Having them line up is a matter of luck so the upgrade randomly does nothing in most battles unless you have 3 farms.

Most of the pawn issues could probably be fixed by giving more starting pawns. E.g. let them come as a 2-pack. Put 1 pawn pack into your deck, receive 2 pawns on the board. Or have an upgrade summon an extra pawn to the left or right of all pawns. Plus being able to place pawns would go a long way because nothing is worse than having a pawn stuck behind a petrified unit.

The challenge to copy the position turned the board in the opposite direction I expected. Please do rotational arrows on this one. Apparently your left rotation is different from mine.

pretty fun!

Way too easy, you have to nerf knights for the full release, becasue when they can move like kings, and have a shield, you can just hop next to the king, and mate it with only one piece, plus, you can get gardens that just give you horses every other turn.

Making the whole map a chessboard that hides a smaller board inside it is a clever twist, and the tutorial explaining the knight's L-shaped leap right on the tiles made it easy to pick up. The Event tile with its challenge, chapel or page choice has a nice mysterious feel.

The enemy is so bad. Consider adding Fairy Stockfish or smth

It feels pretty unreasonable that a draw in a boss battle—especially when you have an overwhelming material advantage—counts as a loss. This is even more so when you only have one minute left, and the game doesn't even show how many moves you have remaining.

I have played a few of these "chess roguelikes" and was even thinking about making a simple one myself, but for now yours is the one that oozes the most atmosphere. I have some suggestions maybe for changes but I do think that you know perfectly what you are doing, so maybe just ignore them if you have valid reasons to do so [Some perk that changes some of the gameplay changes that I propose or something].

1º) Do not add the collection tab at first. Do it once the player has played one run at least. I started by going there and was somewhat overwhelmed at first. You have types of pieces, upgrades, relics, terrain types, light and shadows, trophies. Those are WAY to many things to analyze for someone that hasn't even started playing the game. After just one run, it is immediately clear to me what everything does, but I would seriously hide that from the player until they have completed one run or, even better, completed the first world. You do not gain any information until you know what each category is during gameplay.

2º) If the player reduces the enemy to just the king, it is their turn and they have a rook/queen and any other pieces, award the player the victory directly. It feels like the player is going to win either way and this is just busy work. Maybe allow for this after the first world or after they have shown that they know how to mate in this position or even just to the basic king, but it got somewhat annoying having to play out the same endgame over and over again.

3º) Maybe I would need to play many more games to actually consider this and this suggestion would require some bigger gameplay/visual changes, but consider letting me put the pieces however I want once I know which ones they are. Giving me just some random pieces from my deck feels fine, but having them appear randomly feels really really cheap/annoying in certain configurations. Do we really need to play out me moving the king out of harms way and behind my pawns? This would probably necessitate changing how battles appear on the map as allowing the player to prepare their pieces while knowing the enemy configuration would probably be too strong. I can also see how certain piece decks would be too powerful in this case [Having 3 rooks? Seems OP if you can just stack them in a column]. But at that point they just deserve the win?. 

[Maybe giving me the pieces in a random order without me knowing which ones I get but forcing me to place them before I know all the pieces could be a compromise? Worth considering if people complain that it is too hard. Perhaps I'm just bad though IDK]

4º) OST is really good, and I get what you are trying to do, but it does get repetitive. Having 4/5 songs that work in a similar way to this one could help out the monotony of it. I know I'm asking for a lot, but if you ever feel up for it, it would help out a lot.

For now I can fully recommend the game and I'm looking forward to future updates/releases.

Pretty fun demo! :)
I feel like there is very little speaking for having more than 3 pieces, and the relic that gives you shield with this makes this even stronger.
Some of the art feels a little rough. I think the nodes on the map (especially for normal camps) could look better. Maybe if they were just a simple pawn. 

Since you disclosed AI, I would assume that maybe it's also due to this. I can't really point my finger on it, but some things feel like they could improve artistically.

The worlds looked visually different and I love the style of world 4, but they play the same in my opinion