HachikanShogi Matta Ari

⠀

"HachikanShogi Matta Ari" is an unusual take on the Japanese Chess variant (Shogi) that, surprisingly, is more let down by a couple of tough design choices... but I think it's important to note this really is a free game, it's not a cash grab, mobile app, asset flip or a student homework assignment. That shouldn't be a remarkable thing, but there's so much low quality stuff on Steam that finding genuinely made games isn't nearly as easy to do as you think. What do you do in the game? This is really two games going on at once, which is a clever idea that's let down a bit by poor technical execution and those design decisions (which we'll get to). At face value, you're playing Shogi against an AI. Great. Design flaw #1... the AI is stupidly good. This is the Shogi equivalent of playing Chess against IBM's Watson and wondering why you got your butt handed to you. This flies against the core game premise which, amongst other things, is to have a Shogi game going on while you're doing other things. What other things? Here's what I think is the clever part of the game... the developer deliberately put "anbormalities" in the game, deliberate errors and mistakes, and you need t…

Would be nice if the anomalies were actually randomized and showed what they were, I couldn’t spot anything and just counted the number of turns before I lost. Good game concept though.