Description of App
Chess you already know. An army you have to raise. Chess Meets Necromancy is a turn-based roguelike played on a real chessboard with real chess movement. Your hero is one piece. Everything you capture is a corpse you can raise. THE RUN Twenty waves across four acts. Enemies move like the pieces they are - grunts step like pawns, lancers leap like knights, imp matrons slide like queens. Clear the board, take a relic, spend your gold, march on. Die and the run is over. RAISE AN ARMY Spend souls next to your hero to raise Skeletons, Bone Knights, Wraiths, Bone Golems and Seraphs. Every summon moves as a chess piece. Give them a stance - Hunt, Hold or Guard - and they act after you, every turn. Army slots are limited, so choose what you bring. RELICS AND TRAITS Nineteen relics, each with levels that stack across a run. Seventeen lasting traits bought in the town between waves: extra turns before a wave lands, fewer enemies per wave, a free summon every wave, bank interest, a doubled army cap. No two runs build the same. BOSSES Ten bosses with real HP bars, from the Ogre Warchief to the Lich King, the Stone Titan and the Brood Queen. Act IV stops sending one king and starts sending a court - the final board holds three at once. THE TOWN Between waves, spend gold. Buy traits, promote your King into a Warlord, hire a new champion, or put gold in the bank and let it earn interest. FOUR HEROES Necromancer, Death Knight, Priestess, Ranger. Each moves differently, starts differently, and each has a relic only they can find. TAP ANYTHING Tap any piece to see its name, movement, attack and health. Gold squares preview where it steps, red squares preview what it can take. Learn the board before you commit. - Plays entirely offline, no required account - No ads, no timers, no energy system - Optional Game Center leaderboards and achievements - No in-app purchases; everything is earned in-run - Game controller support - iPhone and iPad - Pixel art and haptics If you can play chess, you can start. Whether you finish is another question.
Comments
Interesting game, but a little non-intuitive
So I just finished a game of CHESS MEETS NECROMANCY. Overall it is an interesting chess game with a unique little twist. Instead of your typical chessboard with your row of Pawns, Bishops, Rooks, Knights and the Queen and King, you start off as your character, the King, and you have to earn the cost of additional troops on the battlefield. You start out as a necromancer, and later in the game you're able to unlock and/or purchase other races/classes using in-game currency. Every time the necromancer/King takes out an opponent, he gains a soul. Souls are used to summon troops to your battlefield. For example your skeleton (basically a Pawn) cost two souls each. You also earned gold which can be used at the Tavern to purchase enhancements, including things like Relics, additional Summons, and Buffs for your character.
The main game board is your typical grid, and each cell is mark like A1, A2, A3, etc. Think of it like a spreadsheet, only it's in reverse order. In other words the bottom left corner or cell would be A1 instead of a higher number. Also like a spreadsheet, letters specify the columns, and numbers specify the rows.
Where it needs to be more intuitive:
The gameplay mechanics are a little all over the place here. For example, if you want to move your character, you find your character on the board, let's say your character is located at E1, and you wish to move over a notch, diagonally, to F2. Hear you will double tap on your character, then navigate to the new cell you want to go to and double tap that. Your character will automagically move to that new spot and that is your turn. However, when moving one of your troops, you pick your troop by double tapping, then double tap the cell you want that troop to go to. Then you have to navigate all the way to the end of the screen where there is a, "wait", button. Double tapping this will move your troop and end your turn. Yet, if you have enough souls to add a troop, you have to navigate below your game board to a row of buttons that specify the troops you can summon to your board. Double tapping on that button, and picking a cell will immediately summon that troop to that cell. However, pay attention to the cells that are spoken aloud when you first double tap on your troop button, it will tell you the valid cells you can summon them too. In other words, you cannot be on E2 with your character, and summon a troop all the way over to H7, just for example.
Further oddities:
Navigating the main game screen, where you can access things like your skilltree, settings, class/race, as well as when you're in the tavern, you will sometimes come across numbers that have no descriptions next to them. For example, in the Tavern as I was swiping from left to right I came across something like, 2, 32, 40, 18, with no understanding as to what those numbers represented. Admittedly I did not try screen recognition to see if that would fix it, so your mileage may vary. Speaking of the Tavern, this is where the replayability factor comes into play. Here you can get all kinds of upgrades for your character, you're summoning capability, and even upgrade your race if you have enough in-game currency for it. And speaking of in-game currency, that is one thing I love about this game. It is free to own and free to play. You earned souls and gold during gameplay, and these are your in-game currency. However so far that I can tell, there is no transaction of real world money in any aspect of this game.
Overall:
This is a fun twist on the classic chess game, and even if you are not an experienced chess player, you may find the theme and gameplay mechanics interesting. As the description says, it is a rope like experience, and has plenty of replay value. VoiceOver access is pretty spot on, and I think with a few tweaks to some of the things I mentioned above, this could be a solid contender for AppleVis's Hall of Fame lineup.
Thanks for reading. 🙂
Re: Interesting game, but a little non-intuitive
Hey Brian! Thanks so much for writing this awesome guide! I'm sure that it will help new players understand the mechanics of the game. The numbers in the tavern are related to your amount of gold, souls, hp and kill multiplier. I'm happy to know that you're having fun! happy gaming!