The new Item system is now working (mostly) and ready to be play tested by our community(that's you). This a really big change to the game and we're really excited to have it complete so that we can move on with content and world building in our huge open world. In this post I'll break down what has changed, why, and how we came to that conclusion, and ultimately decided it was the best thing for the game. 

PLAY NOW: https://chesslike.net 

The OLD Item System (too complex)

When we were making good progress on the new version of Chesslike we had ported over a lot of the items from the original game that were more like puzzle items, as well as the upgrade items: Sword and Shield. In the original game these items would upgrade the piece that landed on them. You might think of them as being equipped, but there wasn't really any indicator of that. The piece just changed ranks. A sword would take you up the Pawn/Knight/Rook/King side of the ladder, and a Shield would take you up the Pawn/Knight/Bishop/Queen ladder. 

We started wanting to do something different with the upgrade items. We were also looking for some way to add a bit more depth to the game. Something that might add more mode to multiplayer, and/or provide more options for puzzles out in the open world. 

The idea we initially went with, and you saw in the game up until yesterday was a sort of upgrade/job system influenced by some of the FF Tactics games. You could actually equip the Sword, Axe, and Scepter to turn into a Knight, Rook, and Bishop respectively, but you also gained experience from captures while battling as that role. That experience was then used to unlock levels of powers that the piece would keep, even after un-equipping the item. The Sword was going to be a double/triple attack. The Scepter was going to be a sidestepping maneuver from the Bishop, and the Shield gave more HP to the piece that leveled up with it equipped.

So if you saw a Bishop with 3 hp, and a triple attack... That means it would have to have 3 levels from the shield, and 2 levels from the sword, but now it's equipping the scepter. The overall rank of this piece is... who knows. It's very complicated to think about in a hypothetical situation, let alone with a party full of those, and in an online match against an opponent with a party full of differently progressed pieces. 

So this is really complex, but some games are complex so maybe that's okay. But then we decided the story was kind of boring, and had some serious holes in the narrative. When we brought on Noisy Savage to create some unique music and sounds, he also brought with him some really great thematic story elements that drove us to start to rewrite the story. One of the cool parts of the new story was to show a Queen that has this awesome power of making fire wherever she moved. But that didn't really fit into our item system, it would have to be a one-off, and we were worried about that actually making sense for people. It's at that point that we thought, maybe there are more items, and whatever power a piece has, it has because of the item it's equipping right now. And that felt really nice. Nice enough that we ditched the old item system completely.

New Super Simple, Super Expandable Item System

So the new system is pretty simple and straight forward. If a piece has a power that's not normal from the moveset of the piece, then it must come from the item that is equipping right now. And you can see and icon of that item on the piece at all times. We're also planning to have those be hover/clickable to see more about it in those times when you're caught off guard by a new piece you've never seen before. The items have a class, so they can only be equipped by a piece type that matches the class. There are group classes though such as "Strikers", which are any piece that moves in a line as far as they can until they hit something... (Bishop, Rook, Queen). There are also items which will be classed as "any" and can be equipped by all pieces. The Crystal below is classed as "any". We're thinking beast pieces can't equip items since they already have special movement patterns, but we're discussing allowing them to have a single innate ability that doesn't change. 

So far we just have a few items. Gma's Amulet provides Fayette with a second hit point. This is earned very early in the game to set the tone of the use of items. It's the same thing as the Crystal/Protection item, but classed specifically for Fayette. The Queensfire item is classed only for queens, and may not actually show up in the campaign as an obtainable item, at least not for a while, but you can use it now in the level editor, and in online multiplayer maps. 

Join us on Discord and suggest more new items!

If you haven't already joined the discord, come on in, we have a channel just for #item-ideas! Stop by and let us know what you think would be a cool magical power to add to Super Chesslike Adventure!

https://discord.gg/Pxhnkf2KBH