Schachkampf: Fantasy Chess is a pixel art Chess game where you complete short chess puzzles in a charming medieval fantasy world.
In each puzzle in Schachkampf: Fantasy Chess you are presented with a chess board with an ongoing chess game, in which you can win the game within a few moves (often just one move). You then just need to figure out what those moves are, get the rival king into checkmate and move on to the next puzzle. It’s essentially the video game equivalent of the chess puzzles you get in newspapers, but you can choose to have full on matches too if you want.
It’s a very addictive game with a charming SNES inspired visual style and lots of cleverly crafted puzzles to work through. Perfect for bite sized fixes of chess-based fun.
Download The Schachkampf: Fantasy Chess Beta Demo Here (Steam)
-Review-
(Preface: I played up to the second level of world 2)
Things I liked:
I like the simple controls. The puzzles are fun. I thought the little secrets like the training grounds and the full chess mode were good additions. The chess side of things seems to be well made. The art is nice. I especially liked how all the chess pieces were given character, and cool animations. There is a good amount of options. The music is very fitting, as well as the sound effects.
Things I disliked:
The goal of the game is a little confusing at first. For example it took me a minute to realize it was chess and had chess controls, but I guess thats on me for not reading that well. And unless someone knows chess pretty well, its pretty difficult to understand how to get checkmate. The art is a little boring to look at sometimes, and the UI is inconsistent. The game can also be pretty slow.
Bugs:
I was able to enter a level before pressing the play button on the main menu. This led to the game getting very confused. Also if you repeatedly press the x button (in the top right corner) the game will softlock. In addition, pressing UI elements in the wrong order will also do this.
Suggestions:
Make it more obvious what the goal of the game is, and maybe have a little tutorial. Make the UI art more consistent, and also just fix the UI. Allow for quick resets (one button press instead of two). Add an option to disable animations.