REVIEW / WizardChess (PC)

We love a good tactical romp. There’s something about turn-based strategy that feels nostalgic but when it’s done right always feels fresh at the same time. The basic rules don’t tend to change massively between tactics games but there are usually enough mechanics present to make things feel like they stand out. We’re going to be playing chess today. Actually, not really, but I’ll explain why as we go. I’ve definitely been playing WizardChess though, and while there are great reasons I’m enjoying the experience there are also quite a few question marks. The first one being the name.

WizardChess is only chess in a very vague sense. The units you’ll be moving about the board move and attack in a similar sense to the way chess pieces do. This, however, is really where the comparison ends. Mechanically this title is a very different animal. WizardChess is definitely a strategy title but the flow of the game and unique ruleset move it so far apart from what chess is that it becomes a thing all of its own. This, incidentally, isn’t a bad thing, but if you go into this with a specific mindset I think you’ll be confused at best and at worst a little bit frustrated.

In WizardChess you’re dropped into a dungeon and are set with encounters and ultimately defeating the tutorial boss over a series of rounds. The tutorial is pretty long-winded, but I think that’s necessary if you’re going to get any real grip on the rules. There are a bunch of different unlockable units in this title and working out what they all do and how they affect your strategy is going to be imperative to victory. What I don’t like is that the tutorial doesn’t save. I had to quit out of the game and the only way to do this was to abandon my current run. As I was a good chunk into the tutorial at this point I didn’t really feel like starting over and just jumped into a different play mode. I’m not sure this was a smart move, to be honest, as the whole feel of the game changed when I jumped into Arcade.

The tutorial mode in WizardChess has a very turn-based feel. You play your units from cards you’ve gathered and are given all the time in the world to work out how you want to manage them. As you can only move one unit per round this sounds easy, but this also makes positioning everything the way you want it tricky when the enemy units are obviously going to be moving about as well. Certain units have special abilities which can be triggered at the cost of movement so it’s all a bit of a balancing act. To attack you simply move a unit next to another and combat resolves automatically based on the stats of the two units involved. Once I got the hang of things I found that this was all very much at my pace and, aside from having to start over, I was rather enjoying myself.

The arcade mode is entirely different from what I’d already encountered. You start with a set number of units, all of which are already on the board. You then battle against the clock in an attempt to defeat as many opponents as you can before a boss spawns. In between rounds you can go to the game shop and buy new cards or level the stats of ones you already have. I noticed pretty quickly though that you don’t get a lot of currency to spend so you aren’t going to be improving things at the rate that I think is going to be necessary to progress at any kind of rate. This forces you to complete rounds at a pace that sort of throws traditional strategy out of the window. Having to play quickly to gather enough currency to stand a chance against the incoming boss means a lot of the elements that make this game interesting get muddled because you aren’t thinking as tactically as you would be in a turn-based setting. In addition to this, even playing quickly you aren’t going to complete a huge amount of rounds, which makes the choices you make in the shop all the more important.

The Shop in WizardChess is a cool idea, in that you aren’t just able to buy new units. You are given the option to forsake extra manpower by increasing the attack and defense of something already in your arsenal. I absolutely don’t recommend doing this initially, though. I think in the early game increasing your units is going to be key to getting anywhere. I wouldn’t start looking at anything else until you’re comfortable with what you have.

Aside from your units being upgradable in stats, they can also be imbued with specific elements. the chosen element will affect the way that unit behaves. If you want them to be more aggressive, for example, you will imbue them with fire. Water, on the other hand, will make them more defensive, earth more patient, and so on. This adds an interesting dimension to the game because it will allow you more control over how the units in your party that you aren’t controlling on a given turn will behave.

I’d love to tell you I beat the first of Arcade Mode’s bosses, but I didn’t. In fact, I got absolutely massacred each time I faced him and I’m not sure how much of this was a lack of skill. In each instance, I felt horribly unprepared for what was in front of me. Aside from your units, you have your hero, but they adopt more of a support role and can’t attack. This meant that when all of my units, (all four of them,) had been killed off I was just a sitting duck waiting to go the same way. As Arcade Mode feels like the main mode in WizardChess I found things got frustrating pretty quickly.

It seems pretty obvious but WizardChess seems like it needs a campaign mode. The tutorial introduces us to our character and a few others we’re going to meet in the game. This is great but as this is a run and not a saveable campaign it doesn’t leave much room for any kind of story to develop. This is a shame because I like the writing present here. I can see that this is very much the sort of game that’s geared to short play sessions. It’s addictive but it’s more about how far you can get in one go, as opposed to how far you can get. The subtle difference here means that this is the sort of thing that would be fun in short doses, but I’m not sure how much that would extend over longer periods of time.

The controls in WizardChess are a funny one. The game itself controls absolutely fine. It’s all point-and-click and there’s really no room for confusion. As would be the case in a game of chess each unit has its own movement be it horizontally and vertically, diagonally, or in multiple directions. This can feel a little bit awkward in the sense of real-time strategy because it can feel like a bit of a pain getting things to where you need them to be. The terrain your units are on can block movement too, which complicates things further. Considering there’s a timed element to what you’re doing being only able to move so far, so fast feels like it defeats the point and slows things down to a degree that doesn’t sit well with the format.

All in all, WizardChess is an odd one for me. I might just need to play this title a lot more to really get used to what’s going on, so some of this might be down to my own failings. The same might apply with respect to my not finishing the tutorial, so If I’m talking horse manure with respect to any of this, I apologize in advance. For the moment, it feels like there are a bunch of really good ideas here that aren’t quite gelling properly. If this were a turn-based dungeon crawler as I mentioned earlier, I think the idea of having chess elements would work better. On the other hand, if you dropped any element of chess and just made this a real-time strategy battle where everything was against the clock I think although the appeal would be different it would definitely still be there. Trying to combine the two playstyles, while definitely interesting is creating more problems than necessary. For me at least.

I like what WizardChess wants to be. I can see a vision here that’s really interesting and I applaud the devs for trying something different. Whether everything works comfortably is a different conversation. This is the sort of game that might just click with you, and if it does I think you’re in for a lot of fun. For me, however, there’s something off mechanically that I can’t quite put my finger on that will probably be enough to see me looking for my strategy fix elsewhere.