Chesscade is a game I prototyped over the course of a week. The original task was to have an increasing difficulty while tracking the player's high score.
The concept I used as my starting point was to combine chess's turn-based movement with retro arcade elements. Since chess already has point values assigned to each piece, I decided to determine the player's score by granting them an according amount each time they defeated an enemy. The difficulty curve would spawn increasingly challenging opponents as the game progressed.
At first, I resisted the arcade trope of power-ups, but eventually decided to add them in on the condition of including a twist, where enemies could benefit from the power-ups as well if they reached them first. The power-ups in the current version include hearts, as well as blue potions, which allow a character to deal an extra point of damage when attacking. What initially drove me to include these was the idea that even a harmless pawn—with 1-2 more lives and perhaps an attack power-up—could become a far more serious threat if left unaddressed. This would create the illusion that the enemies have an interest in self-preservation. Taking them out would then feel more satisfying, as the opponents would feel more like intelligent adversaries, and less like... well, just pawns.
Unity | C#
September 2025
Turn-Based | Arcade
The game was still in need of balancing, especially where power-ups were concerned. Overall, it felt too easy, so I started by capping lives at 3, which fixed the issue of the player accumulating an endless amount of health.
Most of the balancing work, however, was spent on reworking the blue potion power-up. Whereas previously it was a permanent upgrade, I modified the code to make it degradable after 5 uses. The ability to stack several potions to deal greater damage was kept, and I made the conscious decision to keep it as a permanent power-up for enemies.
I added a basic pause menu. This allowed the player to navigate between the game and the start screen more easily, and blocked additional input while active.
The UI was also scaled and reorganized to fit itself to different screen sizes automatically.
I also programmed the enemies to actively seek out any spawned power-ups before attacking the player. This went a long way to making them seem more goal-driven and intelligent.
Enemy movement was improved and debugged. For pieces such as Bishops, this meant including a push-pull cadence, where enemies would come in for an attack, before retreating back to safety. This turned the gameplay into a bit of a "dance", where the player had to decide when to seize a window of opportunity to attack certain enemies.
The environmental design approached finalization.
I began creating an environment to contextualize the gameplay. I started making a simple, chess-style gladiator arena.
To provide the game with a cohesive aesthetic, I began to lean into the black-and-white nature of chess. I reflected this in the shaders I created, and used it to my advantage when selecting colors to improve readability (enemy telegraphing, for example) and make the power-ups easily visible.
The blue potion power-up was fully implemented. It allowed the user to deal an extra point of damage, an effect which could be stacked when several were held.
However, balancing would be required down the line, as the blue potions were initially permanent upgrades, and stacking them over time would bias gameplay too much in the player's favor, as all enemies would eventually be destroyed with a single hit. The eventual remedy was to make this power-up degradable, while keeping the stacking effect.
I allowed enemies to collect power-ups. I wanted enemy self-preservation to be one of the core mechanics of the game, and was attracted by the idea that an opponent left unattended for too long would become increasingly threatening.
Rooks were implemented, and I allowed Pawns to reverse course once reaching the edge of the board.
I also improved telegraphing, so as to reveal not only the enemy's destination, but its trajectory as well, along which the player could take damage as well.
The UI was improved to reveal more information. I modified its appearance, as well as creating a cel shader, as I started to experiment with the game's aesthetic.
An early rendition of gameplay. I implemented a turn-based system early on, as well as basic scoring to reinforce the arcade aesthetic.
I also provided basic telegraphing to reveal where enemies planned on moving next.