“Advise the King” by Dija Studios (Arden DeCuir & Adam DeCuir).
“[A chess-based deck-building game.] […] Battle your way through [ten] levels, collecting cards along the way. Can you get to the final level and defeat the Dark King?”
Mixing a card game system with the movement patterns of chess pieces became somewhat of a good old tradition in Ludum Dare entries (just take a look on “The Cards You’re Dealt” which was made for the forty-first edition of the popular game jam). With the right level design such a concept always is fun, as “Advise the King” proves. Here you play as the lone king of the white pieces, who has to fight against the armies of his black counterpart. While the gameplay is structured in a turn-based manner, that does not automatically mean that the king can only move or attack once per turn.
Instead, the monarch can do as many actions as he want, as long as he still holds some action cards and as long as his action points are not completely depleted. In some of the later stages it is even possible to refresh all the action points by stepping on blue glowing tiles, opening up the possibility for stronger and more complicated turns. Whenever one round is won, the players can choose one new action card and add them to their deck.
Normally those cards are duplicates of the movement schemes of the defeated enemies: If you crushed a rook, you can choose the “Watchtower” card, which allows you to move to or attack a tile that is up to eight spaces away and so on. But you can also attack treasure chests, which contain cards with special abilities, like the “Storehouse” card. This allows you to draw a new card and in return you must choose one of the ones in your hand to be placed on the top of your deck again. [PLAY]
