The Ouroboros King (v2023.05.30)

The Ouroboros King combines the tactical depth of chess with the build variety and replayability of roguelikes. Build a formidable army, discover powerful relics, and buy surprising gadgets to defeat the Covenant Core Gameplay Build the Ultimate Army: Combine classic and new chess pieces, relics that give them bonuses, and consumable items that grant you temporary advantages to create a formidable army. Perfect Your Strategy: You can only move one piece per turn, so you must choose carefully. Make your troops work together to obliterate the enemy army. Another Chance: If you’re defeated you can go back to action on another timeline, where the path to victory will change: different map, different enemies, different rewards… In a fair fight this would make the game impossibly difficult for most players, but OK isn’t a fair fight because you have items and usually a piece advantage. So the game boils down to just piece exchanges and surprising the AI with items (when you’re lucky enough to have them). The game itself is fun, I would recommend playing. However do note that the full version of the game adds nothing (noticeable) when compared to the demo. I paid the $9 expecting more content than what the demo provided but it appears to be the same exact game with a few visual changes. Pretty disappointing as I already managed to get a decent bit of playtime through the demo version. I submitted a refund for the game, however if more content is released in the future I think I would buy it again. But “win” is too strong a term, because like in real chess, games often end in a stalemate by repetition. But Ouroboros King does not have stalemate by repetition. So you’re stuck moving pieces back and forth endlessly, or until you choose to quit and start a new run. I like fairy chess (chess with novel pieces) IRL, so I thought I would like OK, but the complexity of piece moves (particularly with things like portals on the board) is too much and play is bogged down. But the AI is unaffected of course, and plays like Stockfish.