LogFAQs > #966080107

#41: Pawnbarian

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/0/AAA-H0AADYQA.jpg

For some reason, about two years ago, Youtube sent me down a chess rabbit hole. You know that thing Youtube does, where you watch like just *one* video on a topic that's slightly outside of your usual watching habits, and Youtube goes, alright, time to pull up the entire catalog of things related to this and see what gets clicks? Yeah, I don't know which chess video it was that I watched that caused it, but Youtube went 'aha, chess, she's into chess now' and decided ALL of my recommended videos were going to be chess for a bit. To be fair, it worked. I don't really know why I got interested in chess - I don't really play. Not more than anyone else does anyway, I obviously know HOW to play chess and I understand the basic principles of how not to play the shittiest possible chess, but that's about it. But watching lectures about famous chess games and how to play better chess was really interesting to me anyway, and watching them made me feel like I knew something about chess and like maybe I could even learn how to play it well one day. Anyway, I don't know why I opened this writeup with a paragraph about chess, because Pawnbarian is not chess. It is a chess-themed game, but it's not chess.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/1/AAA-H0AADYQB.jpg

Pawnbarian is a chess-themed roguelike in which you have your player character on a 5x5 grid, and a deck of cards, each card representing a chess piece - you move the squares indicated by the chess piece. You starting deck includes kings, knights, bishops, and rooks, all of which move exactly how you'd expect, as well as pawns, which also move as expected, moving only forward except diagonally to capture, but they 'promote' to queens if you move to the back rank. Also on the board are enemies that you must defeat by moving onto their space, as you do in chess; sort of like other similar games like Into the Breach, the enemies move first and display their 'intents', each of them having their own attack patterns and abilities, and then you play up to 2+ cards of you own, moving your piece to capture the enemy pieces and avoid being attacked. It goes for several levels, and in between levels you can upgrade your cards with powers or recover your health. It's not really a deckbuilder like most of these games, your character's deck remaining the same throughout, but it does have a lot of the other trappings, such as incrementally increasing difficulty levels like those found in Slay the Spire.

I think I originally played this game as a flash game on Kongregate or something, but it has been polished up and upgraded into a fully-fledged game, and it's quite good! The premise is awesome and hooks you immediately. It starts out seeming easy but quickly gets quite daunting, and you need to play really sound tactics to advance. Enemies have quite tricky abilities that require you to defeat them in certain ways, requiring clever and patient use of your cards to make good moves. It lacks the hallmark variety and randomness that most roguelites tend to have, but the tradeoff is that you can't rely on spinning the roguelite slot machine and hoping for good items; you need to play well in this game. It demands it, and it expects a lot. I sort of appreciate the tactical prowess this game requires for something seemingly so simple.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/6/2/AAA-H0AADYQC.jpg

There's a lot of different characters with different starting decks and abilities, too, which really gives you a lot more to do in this game. Each character plays completely differently and has their own gimmick, and usually their own little fairy-chess pieces as well. I really like the Mystic, who can't get armor upgrades for their cards but creates safe zones whenever they move that prevent enemy movement and give you defense, and whose special "Ghost" piece lets you move to any unoccupied space on the board, which can be upgraded with cardinal or diagonal after-attacks for devastating effect. They're all fun to play - except for the Shogun whose whole gimmick is that they're shogi pieces instead (a sort of Japanese chess) and I can't remember how they work at all.

I haven't been able to advance too far into the higher difficulty modes, but they go quite far. Even at the first level the game is already pretty tough and I doubt I'll be able to get much further than that, because this game seems to have a way of punishing my impatience and maing me feel like a fool. As far as roguelites go, I didn't spend quite as much time absolutely hooked on this one, as it lacks that addictive quality of every run being totally different, but it's nevertheless an extremely precise and well designed strategy roguelike that I'd recommend checking out. You don't even have to be good at chess!

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