Shotgun King

Gameplay idea is simple but augmented with the progression and randomization of the roguelike genre. It works really well and feels very satisfying to successfully clear a board or pull off a narrow escape from a tight place. When it “works”. This game will flip-flop about behaviors that it allows. Being diagonal from a pawn is nothing. Being diagonal from a pawn while you have one directly in front of you? It’s safer to just disengage since firing at the active threat, even while being careful to aim your blast so that it clear the pawn in front of you, has a fifty-fifty chance of still having some of the pellets hitting the pawn in front of you, allowing the threatening pawn to kill you immediately. There are shields that protect you from inputting bad moves that will kill you. If you’re in the path of a rook, and shoot a non-threatening knight, it will consume a shield and flash a little heads up about the bad move, encouraging you to instead get out of the path of the rook. If you instead shoot the rook, even if the shot would kill the rook and eliminate the threat in the first place, it will still flash that warning, leading you to believe half the time that certain perfectly fine game actions are bad. It does not do this for the (enemy) king however, if you can land a death blow on the king, it won’t prevent you from doing so, even while in mortal peril, because the game ends immediately upon killing the king. You cannot hop on and claim pieces like in actual chess. That feels like a shortcoming. However, there is something called “blade” that is entirely unexplained. Having blade 3 will allow you to melee units adjacent to you with 3 or fewer hit points. Same for every other level of blade. Blade however, does not move you into that piece’s space like you might think, if you have the idea of claiming pieces like in normal chess in your head. Also be careful not to become too powerful! If a stray bit of buckshot hits the wrong unit and kills it, the queen/bishop/rook behind it that wasn’t a threat previously will instantly kill you. I guess like in chess. I just wonder why the shields wouldn’t pop up a warning for this particular circumstance. It does if you have the sawed-off shotgun upgrade and the blast back would kick you into a threat space. Basically, it’s really good, and you’re going to really enjoy it, and you’re going to do run, after run, after run, until at some point the amount of inconsistencies and small irritations pile up and you’re more annoyed than when you picked up the game for that session.

It deserves every penny