itch.io

sorry for the slow reply!

when i said the controls were bad, i meant that there was a small delay when moving while holding down a direction, and once you committed to a direction, you can't back out. this meant that my movements came a little too late, as i was holding down to move generally.

playing around in the first (empty) level to figure out what felt wrong when i played 5 months ago, it seems that if you hold down a vertical direction, you just cannot go horizontal at all. this is not the case with horizontal movement; if you input left and up, you will go up.

changing the input system so that the latest direction input overrides any prior input when holding down directions would make the movement feel a lot more fluid (to me at least).

here are a few examples of what i mean how the input system should be handled. note that no inputs are let go of.

• holding left, then up, would make you move up. 
• holding up, then left, would make you move left.
• holding left, then right, would make you move right.

tl;dr changing the movement input system to accept the first given input and ignoring anything else would do a lot to make the game feel better to play.

i'm going to be frank, i rage quited not because of the actual design of the levels, but because the controls were awful and the fact that the bishops aren't even deterministic (i had them sometimes enter the exit of the level!). it's too easy to accidentally run into a knight when you meant to change directions, and the bishops makes it impossible to plan ahead as there's too much stuff going on to actually think.

the concept is really solid however. execution isn't so great, but half of that is the controls.

You can probably play with a standard deck of 52, just remove all cards that isn't a number or ace and you'll be able to play just fine. Count ace as 1.

EDIT: Have your friend tell you which suit it is to be as accurate to the game as possible.