So, you only have your king, versus the White Army. Like in chess, you and your opponent take turns. Like in chess, you win by killing the enemy king. Like in chess, your king moves on one nearby square, and enemy pieces use their chess movement rules...
Unlike in chess, you have a shotgun. Pieces have health points, you cannot capture them by moving, but who cares ?
It's a nice strategic turn-by-turn game, first created during Ludum Dare, where it won a whole lot of (well deserved) accolades. The game is organized as a rogue-like, as a number of "rounds", where you each time must kill the king (or its replacement).
After each round, you choose one "reward" package, out of two available. Each package contains both a BLACK card, which improves you (better damage, more ammo, ability to hit in melee, grenades, better movement, a moat to help you defend, etc...), and a WHITE card, which improves the enemy army (+3 pawns, +1 queen, or "Theocracy", which removes the enemy king, adds bishops, and changes the win objective to "Kill all the bishops", for instance...)
If you manage to win enough rounds (like, 11 ?), you get a final round where the TRUE white king comes down, boss-style, to personally lead its army and try to kick your ass.
The game is surprisingly easy to learn, but hard to master, and is quite addictive.
A game can be quite fast (especially if you goof up early), and even if you go "far", you can win a full game in around one hour.
There are different shotguns to choose from at game start (which must be unlocked first by reaching some in-game objectives), which add to the replayability. There are also two other game modes (different from the Throne mode, which I discussed), which I haven't tried yet ("Endless", and "Chase", which is unlocked by reaching level 15 in Endless)
Graphics are like CGA, and the sounds are ultra-basic. But who cares ? The gameplay is very good, and that's what we need ! All in all, a very good little game.
