Played the online demo. This is nicely done! I like the UI sound effects. I wished a few of the UI elements (the map buttons in particular) had a stronger rollover effect - I see that the cursor changes, but it didn't read as "clicky" as I'd like.
The first few puzzles are a great selection because they're clearly teaching me to look for particular kinds of opportunities. I'm used to chess puzzles feeling kind of random, and this got past that for me. I did bounce off of puzzle ten for a bit, and found myself wishing for a bit more feedback (as other reviewers have mentioned).
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Schachkampf - Fantasy Chess's itch.io pageComments
Thanks for the feedback.
I fixed a bug with those buttons a few days ago and thought the same. Maybe I'll just go with a resize or a little color switch for now.
The other part with the feedback is already on my to-do. I planned to show the last move of the opponent, so you can see where he could escape.
And for the puzzles...they are in fact random. I just decided how many mates per puzzle and the algo gets it from a db.
My first idea was exactly like that. I wanted to make worlds with different themes, like openings or endings and put more focus on the different chess tactics...but I can't play chess (or couldn't until I began with this game), so learning all these things is way out of scope for me.
In the end I switched to a randomized but endless version of weekly new puzzles.
Maybe if when this game is finished and I someday meet a chess player who wants to create the puzzles the original idea would get a new approach.
2 years ago(+1)
That's actually on my to-do list. Something like a last move before ending the game would be my solution.
No they are pulled from a chess puzzle database. But it sounds like an interesting approach to generate them. Can't even think of an algorithm which can handle this.
If you don't clear the world you'll get new puzzles and start all over.
To be honest I'm not sure if this is the best approach. I think about changing it to getting. New puzzles when you press a new game button.
2 years ago(+1)
They are differentiated by difficulty, aka the number of mates you need to win. It's a simple CSV file where I have listed each level with it's mate count. If I later on want to add a harder difficulty, I can easily add another column with a higher difficulty.
They don't have different themes, I just look for mates. The reason for that is I myself only understand mate puzzles. The other types just let you do x moves and you have to end in the best possible position. That's something for people who can play chess on a decent level.
I also think so. But I am not sure that I can solve them all. I always switched to another area when I failed at one puzzle for several times. I do not play chess myself. Instead I am a Go player. For Go there also exist thousands of puzzles (e.g. life and death problems). So maybe you can do a nice SNES-style GoKampf as well! ;-)
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