izigame.me

This is exactly my kind of silliness. Shotgun King is a chess game except you only have your king left and he has a shotgun. If that makes you think "Wait a minute, that's not chess at all!" then you would be correct. The game only wears its chess influence only on the surface, the game actually is a turn-based strategy roguelike. You have to play through 12 rounds and defeat the final boss at the end. Each round your goal is to kill the white king. You can do this by firing your shotgun, each white piece have different amount of HP, pawns and knights have the lowest and the king has the most. Your shotgun has three main stats: firepower, range and firing arc. Firepower defines how many pellets your shotgun fires, each pellet dealing exactly one damage. Multiple pellets can hit the same target, can hit multiple targets or completely miss any target. There is some RNG involved here but the closer you stand to your target, the more likely you are to hit it. Range shows the maximum travel range of your pellets. Your firing arc shows the spread of your pellets, they will always be inside this arc. Shooting an enemy that stands directly before you will always make all pellets hit him. It's the same concept as in other shooting games, the shotgun is more powerful close range and loses its power the further you stand away. However, sometimes a wider spread might be beneficial to hit more pieces. There are some strategic decisions you can make here.
Shooting or moving will always pass your turn. White pieces will move on their turn and they can move multiple pieces at the same time. They have their own speed stat that defines how many turns they have to wait until they can move.
Moving will also reload your shotgun. This is important, so you can move outside of check and fire on your next turn.
Your shotgun has only limited ammo, which does regenerate but very slowly, so you don't want to kill every piece, you want to focus on the king but still deal with troublesome pieces.
After each floor you will come in contact with the roguelike mechanic of the game, the cards. You get a selection of two different black cards which help you for the rest of the run. These can be simple like more firepower, ammo or range but they also can give you completely new abilites like a melee attack that does not use ammo or grenades, that will hit multiple pieces but can also kill you.
Each black card is tied to a white card. These are upgrades for the white side. They can get more pieces, change how pieces move and give pieces more HP or speed. You will have to evaluate what upgrades you need but also what downsides you can endure in return. One white card that always appears is the white queen after floor 3. You can't escape her, she is everywhere.
Killing a non-pawn piece will give you an edge however. You get their "soul" which you can activate to move in the same pattern as the piece you killed. You can only store one soul but you can get black cards that allow you to store more or have some other synergy with it. These soul cards are best used to get out of check or close the distance to the white king.
The game is incredibly goofy with its concept but its also a challenging strategy game that will take you some time to master. And as you beat th egame, you will start to unlock new difficulty levels that add extra pieces at the start, improve the enemy AI and give the white king more HP. You can also unlock new shotguns that have different starting stats. There is a surprising amount of variety in this small game. The game still gets updates to this day, despite being almost three years old. It's funny, it's challening and it's the exact type of game to play at the evening after a long work day.