Pawnbarian

[h1][b]Neither here nor there:[/b] Pawnbarian[/h1] If I had a nickel for every time I played a roguelike tactical reimagining of chess, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, and in less than a month - first with Shotgun King, and now with [b]Pawnbarian[/b]. Pawnbarian takes a slightly more stripped-down approach to reworking chess than Shotgun King by mixing roguelike tactics and card game rules with classic chess mechanics. You play as the eponymous Pawnbarian (or one of the other five unlockable characters), trying to clear a set of levels by removing all the enemies. To do this, you'll use cards that allow you to mimic the movements of different chess pieces. You can use up to three cards per turn before the enemies make their move, and you're assigned a new randomly generated hand. The trick, then, is to figure out the optimal way of using your current hand to eliminate as many enemies as possible, or at the very least avoid taking damage from enemy attacks. Of course, this is easier said than done - most enemies will spawn with random modifiers that make them harder to deal with, such as ranged attacks or damage immunity un…

I like the monsters and the different take on chess. The big issue I have is that i can hit or get hit and have no idea why (and can't rewind or any other mechanic to understand and find out))... and it is really hard to see what the updated damage will be if I make a move. Also showing a picture of a dungeon is not enough to call it a dungeon.

Yet another short n small game riffing on general chess vibes and mechanics while still being its own wholly new thing and not really otherwise related to chess in any way. The whole chess thing is really just a starting point for player familiarity with a few game mechanics and I think that makes games that use the chess theme very approachable in a good way (we all know how bishops, rooks and knights move, after all, so when you see those pieces in a game you roughly know what they're going to do even if the context is different), but besides the thematic and moveset relationship to chess it really has nothing in common with its mother game, and I say that while being of the opinion it's very much a good thing! I mean when you think about it, nobody comes to Steam to actually play chess. So really I find that chess-inspired games are wonderful and a whole lot of fun, but games that try to re-invent chess itself tend to be complete garbage. I can very happily report that Pawnbarian is 100% in the camp of just chess-inspired or making use of chess-piece mechanics as a starting point of movesets for a TBT: all that is to say that the Devs have taken inspiration from chess to deliv…

No lags, can recommend

I wonder if it's possible to have more levels.

it's mostly a reminder of how fun shotgun king is.