Post-Jam Update Now Live

Summoner's Chess combines the worlds of chess and checkers with the ability to summon pieces. The initial jam version was built in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 55, now that the jam is over, I'm releasing the enhanced post-jam version.

This update includes:

✨ A Visual Revamp

I'm still fairly new to game dev, so making things looks nice is pretty tricky - especially in only 48 hours. Improvements were also needed to make the summoning button much more obvious.

♟️ Upgradable Pieces

When pawns in chess and men in checkers reach the end of the board, they upgrade to stronger pieces. Previously I was able to include the automatic upgrades for checkers men, but wasn't able to finish it for the pawns - this is now possible!

🎥 New Camera Views

By default, I included a fixed persons-eye-view of the board, this can now be rotated. I've also added a new top-down view - it's essentially Civ V's "Strategic View".

🛠️ Custom Matches

The compo submission included 10 progressively more difficult levels, but I kept finding myself wanting to create more and more more wackier custom layouts. The post-jam version now includes a 'Custom Match' mode for creating any layout you want. This includes both manual and randomisable starting layouts (or a mix of both), classic and anarchy (place anywhere) placement limitations, multiple AI difficulty levels, and the ability to start with specific points. I'll be popping back to play this mode for sure.

🤖 Enhanced AI

For the jam version, the opponent AI was fairly rudimentary - it did little more than select a piece at random and prefer to attack than move. This was fine for the initial 48 hour jam version, but with a bit more time I was able to make the AI a tad smarter.

The updated AI now considers all possible moves and attacks before selecting one of the actions it considers most worthwhile. This means taking things like the value of pieces and number of threats at a location into consideration. It's not a grandmaster (yet) but it will be a much sharper.

By default, the campaign now uses this updated AI, but you can still play against the original (easier) AI by selecting the "Essentially Random" difficulty when creating a custom match.

Play the post-jam version on itch now: https://mattravenhall.itch.io/summoners-chess