Re:Turning chess into a roguelike via design first principles
by spacemarine1 on Friday May 01, 2026 @04:52PM
(#47980147)
Thank you. I agree. When done well, a good mashup can feel “easy” and “obvious” but really the devil is in the details. Creating the perfect balance of features across the whole design space for a shippable game takes extreme skill, taste and a lot of effort.
Garry often describes the fast iterative development loop for startups. Launch, test and get user feedback, polish off the rough edges and then do it again. I believe the same process is necessary for excellent game development.
It’s also pretty easy to come up with all kinds of fun variants for them, such as:
- Kings are strong, charismatic leaders and can persuade enemy units to join their side.
- Rooks are defensive units and can boost the defenses of adjacent pieces, or they’re strong enough to shift allies by literally pushing them in a direction as part of their turn.
- Bishops are men of the cloth and can heal the wounded. Pieces that are resurrected are vulnerable to being “turned” by bishops.
The difficult part is playtesting the everloving sh## out of it, since it’s a bit like coming up with new mechanics or cards for MTG: easy to do, but hard to balance.