Game idea: chess-like with your set team of heroes!

[Deleted]

Hi there!

I have had this idea lingering for more than half a year now. Countless shower thoughts have added to it. Now I want to get it out.. somewhere. I don't mind if you shoot me down (but I prefer if you didn't), I just want to share my idea

Background: I'm a normal videogame geek. Nothing professional, nothing too casual (I play stuff on a daily basis). Now one thing I have never found anywhere, is a modern version of chess. Thi got me thinking. Naturally inspired by some other titles, my idea grew and I would love to see it happen. In one way or another.

Since I have nowhere near the appropriate knowledge to develop a game (I studied renewable energies^^), I fear that this might never see the light of the day.


Now here's the idea:

Imagine a 5x5 board. Not just simple tiles black and white. 6 different colors, elements, opposing themselves: nature and arcane, fire and water (the classic, right?) and light and dark (another clichee). Anyways, these tiles are in a random distribution with one neutral one in the center.

Now there's you, the player. You Have chosen a team of 5 distinct heroes to battle your opponent (see the multiplayer niche here?). Those heroes, unlike in chess, aren't bland figurines, but they differ in elemental attunment, "roles" like ranged, melee, magic, tank and movement patterns.

What is your goal? Well to annihilate your opponent! There could be several ways to do so: Kill every units, gather some crystals spawning, have the most units around after a specific amunt of turns. Or all of these!

Speaking of turns, here comes the chess-like element: each round you may move a figure, let it attack and use a special skill of chosen unit.


What? Attack and skills? Yes! Unlike in chess, you don't take the adversary piece by jumping on them, but rather by killing it with the tools your hero has at hand.

Heroes would have have a passive (to differenciate them from other same-role units), an active and an "ultimate", defining their role and their general use.

Their skills would recharge by x turns passed.

Their effectivity would depend on their element and the tile they're standing on, the element of the attacked unit and maybe some more savory mechanics.

Let's have an example:
Turn 1: Tank hero sits on a light tile, being a "paladin", he gains a bonus (to offense and defense!). Dark mage sits just a tile across on fire tile. Him being dark and edgy, he does not gain anything on a fire tile. poor him.

The tank moves one up (onto a water field) close to the mage and hits him with his holy club of the righteous. Since he no longer is on the bright side, his bonuses vanish. Dark mage gets damage. Cool.

Now you may activate a skill. Paladin hero has a skill that shields him and two diagonal tiles behind him from any attack damage for the next turn. And also: paladin's passive activates! This makes any tile he stands on at the end of your round change to anything but dark (since he's afraid of it) with the chance to be light. This does not happen when he stands on alight tile. I call OP!

Turn 2: Your opponent is not happy that you hit his supermage and retaliates with his nature ranger who as just waiting for you to get in his line of sight. He stands on a nature field, since your opponent is not that bad at this game. The ranger can hit you from 2 tiles away, so he can shoot your paladin without having to move. Neat!

And that's what he does. Arrow to the knee buddy! Since your Paladin stood on a non-light field, he gets no defense bonus, but takes additional bonus because the Hunter stood on an appropriate field. If your paladin was an arcane nature, the Hunter would even have done more damage! Nature and arcane aren't the best buddies.

That's for the example. I strongly believe that this should be an easy-to-get gameplay.

Now for the interactions with the element affiliations I have some more in-depht mechanics in my mind.

Also a few ideas fo several heroes (cliché and non-cliché!). A few ideas to have even more hero individualisation (choice from 2 skills instead of one baseline, choice of passives etc...)

So there is a lot to balance, but I believe that these mechanics qould not be too overwhelming. Maybe at the start, but they are quite intuitive.

There is the possibility to give each hero some kind of backstory, there is certainly the possibility to go with themes that scratch steampunk, medieval classes, some exciting new stuff etc.

Maybe you could add a second skill for every hero in case only one is too bland.

Also a way to make it economically interesting: Hero skins!

What I would not want to see: comic or pixel graphics. Pay-to-win situations (or any kind of stamina-like mechanic).

Heroes should be available to everyone. no exceptions, no bonuses for anyone dropping more money to it as necessary (aside from occasional fan-service if you know what I mean ).

If by any chance you, dear reader who had the patience to endure this text, are a somewhat respectable Game-developer, don't fear to hit me up, if you want to see what I can come up witth!

I'm pretty creative in terms of having cool ideas. But I lack the skill and the time to actually act on these ideas.

If you're not a game developer, I hope you've had a nice read =)

Thank you for your patience!

[Deleted]

So basically Hearthstone without the board.

[Deleted]

uh no?^^
there is a board, 5x5 tiles.
no cards, animated heroes that move strategically. Nothing to add each turn.

this doesn't even come close to a TCG... if it did, I would not have it labeled chess-like^^

[May90]

I really like your idea in general, I had something similar in mind when I was thinking of ways to generalize Chess to a team vs team system, rather than a player vs player. As a veeeeeeery big Chess player, I would like to see a modernization of the core gameplay. However, in this particular case, I see quite a few issues with the implementation you described.

In my opinion, there are three elements that make hundreds millions people love Chess:

1. Simplicity of the rules.

This leads to a very deep gameplay: since both players' options are always strongly limited, you can in some cases calculate possible variations for dozens turns ahead, and your game plan should always be pretty precise and include a lot of possible scenarios.

2. Lack of the RNG element.

When a player loses, they know that this is the result of a mistake on their part, not just some unlucky series of rolls. This means that the player can learn and improve from every game, and slowly and steadily grow in power, never quite hitting a plateau.

3. Fast-paced "combat".

One of the most exciting elements of Chess is sacrifices. Sometimes the position seems equal, and suddenly something unexpected happens, a rook sacrifice - and the player has to surrender two turns later. Everyone who has ever made a tricky sacrifice and won a game remembers the thrill of those moments, and even losing to such sacrifices always feels good.

In your proposed variation, all of these elements are somewhat compromised. The rules may be too complex for anybody to reasonably calculate anything further than by 2-3 turns, which makes the game much more strategical and much less tactical - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not quite in the spirit of Chess. RNG element ensures that sometimes the person playing worse than the opponent will win the game due to a lucky roll, somewhat limiting the opportunity for growth, as everyone can eventually hit a plateau on which the RNG element starts overweighting the advantages in skill. Finally, having to hit a piece multiple times to "kill" it would lead to a slow-paced, crawling gameplay, with likely over a hundred turns typically needed to win a game, as opposed to Chess with the average number of turns at ~30.

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I like your idea with the different field "colors" having different functionality, as well as that of heroes with abilities. Here is what I would try:

- Take a set of pieces working similarly to Chess pieces, but with a limited range of allowed activity per turn.
- Clone it 5 times, and place 6 players at the sides of a hexagonal board.
- Paint the squares (hexagons?) into 6 different "colors".
- Change the piece's functionality slightly based on the color; for example, a dark rook from a non-dark square can move in one of the 6 directions by a maximum of 3 squares, but a dark rook from a dark square can also move in the other 6 directions by 1 square.
- Make the "kings" heroes, which can use an ability, say, every 3 turns. The ability may also depend on the square "color"; for example, a "Paladin" king on a non-light square could protect a pawn from being captured for 1 turn, but on a light square he can protect a pawn from being captured for 3 turns.
- A leveling mechanic could be implemented, where, say, every king "levels up" every 5 turns, and having captured enough pawns/pieces from the opponents adds extra level-ups.

This already might be a bit too complicated for a modern version of Chess, but I think there is still a lot of room for depth, for skill growth, even for Chess-like theory development, with openings, endings and middle game researched in depth. With 6 players, the game could be played as FFA, 2v2v2 or 3v3, each variation being ranked uniquely and having completely different theories and general strategies.