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A downloadable █ █ █ █ for Windows
Climb the tower, defeat opponents, use wands.
Controls
Numpad: move
Number keys: use inventory items
X / mouse hover: examine
Enter / Numpad 5: confirm
Escape: cancel
R: restart
Credits:
Made for the 7DRL Challenge (https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2026)
Made using Multimedia Fusion 2 by Clickteam (https://www.clickteam.com)
The game uses two shaders (Colourifier Plus & Dithered Fade) that I coded in part & fully before 7DRL, respectively.
Plugins and other additional tools:
Xlua by Justin Aquadro, Lukas Meller
Tile Map by Lukas Meller
Sound Player by Lukas Meller
ForEach by Ross Pickett
Layer Object by Cragmyre
Create By Name by Anders Riggelsen
Ultimate Fullscreen by Sebastian Janisz
SFX made with OpenMPT, Audacity & SFXR by DrPetter
Background ambience made by me for an earlier jam project
Some audio samples made before 7DRL
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Version 1.82 hours ago
- Version 1.71 day ago
- Version 1.61 day ago
- Post-jam version 1.52 days ago
- Post-jam version 1.42 days ago
- Post-jam version 1.32 days ago
- Post-jam version 1.22 days ago
- Post-jam version 1.12 days ago
Comments
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I very much love this idea of a roguelike with positioning being the main challenge, it's a good twist on the formula and using chess pieces makes it very understandable even with the minimal instructions. The wands are a great way of adding just a little additional strategy to deal with coming up against complicated formations difficult to move through. It feels pretty mechanically complete and is very engaging.
My one criticism is that when you die the board is immediately wiped, which makes it a bit difficult sometimes to understand what killed you and what mistake you made in order to learn from it. The log can help with this a bit by saying what type of piece did damage to you, but it doesn't help so much when there's multiple of the same kind of piece on the board. There might be some intentionalality to that with the conlang but I'm not sure. Still highly recommend it for a different kind of roguelike challenge.
Spent quite a few hours on this, it's incredibly fun!
Despite figuring out ways to deal with the dreaded same-color king groups ( -> waiting on the edge of a long wall and taking them out one by one when they become visible, avoiding damage from the next one in line cause they weren't in view yet ) and other troublesome types of enemy layouts from the Jam version, i had to give up on it because it kept crashing while inspecting enemies on floor 9 & 10
The new versions feel way more fair but maybe lack some of the previously dangerous situations that would require smart usage of the wands to get out of unscathed ? Coz' I managed to win the only run I did on v1.5 without really needing to use any ( other than the staircase one to go faster )
Thanks a lot! Hmm, I feel like the "random selection of moves" enemies could be stronger to make the final floors more of a threat; that might be good for the game's difficulty curve. Sorry about the crashes, though.
Am I correct that the newest release improves the game balance? In the previous version, all my runs ended once I met multiple Kings of my color, which seemed impossible to defeat or evade without taking heavy damage. In this version I encountered nothing of the sort and completed the game fairly quickly.
Yeah, I didn't have time to playtest the later levels during development and over the past couple days have tinkered with the difficulty, especially to reduce cases where it feels like the player can't respond to what the game sends their way. The moves-every-turn King floor was a notable example - it still exists but I've adjusted the enemy layout to make it less likely to produce impossible scenarios.
A neat game - but is there a fullscreen option? I find it a little difficult to play in a small window.
Also, there's a small glitch - sometimes, when you continue to the next level, some enemies are still briefly visible on screen during the level transition screen.
Added this! It can be activated with F1.
Thanks for the update. However, there seems to be a new bug. One of the wands creates a row of pickups that are supposed to restore the player's health. But in the new version, these pickups do nothing when taken.
That was an unintended effect and I removed it; it was kind of funny but seemed potentially a bit too powerful? But I might put it back in if it wasn't game-breaking
I believe I blew up the stairs. 10/10 would stare at a ruined floor tile again.
It was very funny that this could happen but I've removed it from the later versions since it could happen out of the player's control.
So, I figured out if you have a Windows machine, you can use the On-Screen Keyboard to play. Once open, click Options -> Turn on numeric keypad and then click NumLock on the keyboard.
got no number pad :[
please add different control schem
I added in the vi control system supported by e.g. Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup.
the game is very mysterious. no mechanics are explained and most wands are ?. so you have to figure everything out by yourself. very cool!
GFGFHMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario MultiverseMario Multiverse
GHGFHFGHFG
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would love to play this, but do not have a numpad on my laptop. could you add nethack movement as an alternative?
y k u
h l
b j n
Same! Please add support for keyboards without numpad, or controllers.
Added this!
Very addicting Rouge-like and another fun game from Hempuli! Great to see him trying out new genres. :)
Made it to the second floor, I have two keys and a wand but I have no idea how to get the door open. I've used the number keys to select one of the keys, moved the yellow rectangle over to the door but nothing happens when I press Enter. Ended up giving up in frustration unfortunately. I'm clearly missing something that may be obvious to others?
Hmm, the way to open the doors should be to press a number key corresponding to the slot a key is in, then moving the reticle over the door and pressing Enter or Numpad 5. Sounds like this is what you did, but if it's not too much trouble, could you try doing this one more time to confirm that something is broken?
I didn't realise I could press Numpad 5, that worked, thank you
Seems like a cool game, just wish it could use the number row as well, since I'm using a windows emulator on Mac
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congratulations on the release, I am hoping to enjoy this chess.zip in the future :) :Frog::frog:frog:
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