izigame.me

Shotgun King does a concept I never thought would work, and it does it really freaking well. In chess, you need to capture the king using your army of pieces. But what if, instead, you just had a king and only a king? But also give that king a shotgun and have him tear through the other side? That's Shotgun King in a nutshell.
In essence, the opposing white army is just like a normal chess set. Bishops move diagonally, Rooks in straight lines, Pawns can promote if they reach the end, etc. The challenge here is that any of them can kill the player, and there are many more of them than there are of you. You, as a player, cannot capture enemy pieces. Instead you have a shotgun and you get to literally and metaphorically blow them away.
After you win by killing the opposing king, the round is over and you get given four cards that come in two sets. Two black cards, and two white cards. Whatever white and black card combo you pick will change how the game is played. The black cards buff you, and the white cards buff (can you guess) the white army. On paper that sounds pretty dull, but in game it's anything but. Rooks can become freaking catapults, you can have a square on the map become a teleport beacon that you can use at any time, it gets wild.
Did I ever mention that there are three game mode, multiple types of shotguns, and up to 15 extra difficulty ranks? Well I did now. One shotgun has piercing pellets, one allows you to reroll card choices, one of them only has one shell max in the chamber before reloading. One gamemode is endless, one is where you have to escape a castle, and you also have the normal mode with those 15 different difficulty ranks called Throne ranks. Seriously, there are so freaking many different ways to play this game it is kind of insane.
The audio and visual design is also really cool. The screen has a CRT filter and everything is in this almost surreal pixel art style. Shotguns sound meaty and none of the audio design choices cause fatigue over time. Also, every change you have happen in game has something change visually along with it. A lot of care was seemingly taken to make sure you could tell at a glance what is going to happen or has already happened. Can a queen unit no longer be killed due to a card? Well she's now made of metal and you can see that. Does a pawn have a different attack that now goes two spaces in front of it? If it does, now it has a spear. These touches are small, but they really do make all the difference.
This little roguelike gem is $10 USD. Let me reiterate that. $10 bucks. This has quickly become one of my favorite roguelikes of all time, and I could not recommend it more.