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CHARK's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #87 | 3.863 | 3.863 |
| Audio | #156 | 3.698 | 3.698 |
| Enjoyment | #299 | 3.698 | 3.698 |
| Overall | #300 | 3.552 | 3.552 |
| Visuals | #364 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
| Innovation | #389 | 3.351 | 3.351 |
| Theme | #1122 | 2.785 | 2.785 |
Ranked from 205 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
The King plays chess to earn his coin—and indulge in new sweets
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
I didn’t use any asset packs or third-party resources—everything was made from scratch. I drew inspiration from the design of Balatro and Gambonanza
How many people worked on the game?1
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Comments
This is an amazing game! I can see myself spending hours on this!
If you’re still into it, adding CHARK to your Steam wishlist would really help me out!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3371170/CHARK/
Amazing work well done, so well polished and clean gameplay, as well as intuitive to pick up and play
Most intense game of chess I've ever played. Great idea and great execution, well done.
Amazing work dude!
Loved it! And I wish you success with the publisher/release
Great idea!
I might be too much of a chess nerd, but I found myself wishing I would swap turns with the opponent rather than have 2 moves and then all their pieces move.
I'm not sure what the score at least x number of poker chips feature was adding to the game, if it's not a critical aspect I recommend simplifying it.
More transparency on what buying the piece cards does and more cookie types might help too.
Very nice work, felt polished and complete!
ALmost perfectt
Absolutely amazing game! Chess balatro goes hard
Really clean presentation, looks and sounds amazing for a solo game in only a week.
Gameplay is interesting but personally found parts of it a little confusing/unintuitive at times, perhaps because I'm unfamiliar with Balatro. The discard button seems to subtract 2 discards, not sure if that's a bug, but was pretty rough when I was thrown into the odd board where almost everything I could reach with both my draws was protected haha. Interesting take though, and can't stress how nice the presentation is given the limited time and solo dev :)
A lot of fun! Are you thinking about making this into a full game? I'd love to play that.
Great little game!
Such an incredibly well made game! A good replacement for those that are tired of Balatro. Good job! 🙌
I absolutely love chess, and finally there's an awesome chess roguelike! Everything else on Steam is complete garbage, so I'm really looking forward to the full version. Best of luck to you - giving this the maximum score!
Even though I read that lives multiply scores, it was still a bit confusing why a round was won, or why I lost the very first level even though I beat every chess piece. Managed to score 990. Cool game.
Really fun idea and super polished for a jam game! Took me a moment to get used to the mechanics, but once I did it clicked. Excited to see where you take this next!
Really solid work. Personally I’d have preferred more real feeling chess puzzles, but I get the decision to do it this way. The discard mechanic is really either poorly represented or explained, as I’d try to select and discard a card and then it’d flash as the opponent’s turn and then back to mine? Not sure I understood that. The instructions to “pick a level on the left” didn’t make sense when there was only ever the one choice? Incidentally fullscreen breaks on a 3:2 monitor. As others have mentioned the bonus you get for capturing with new piece cards you buy seems confusing and is hard to tell if it happens in game or not? These are little nitpicks of course, but you’ll need to address them if you end up releasing this :) The 3x multiplier with 20+ gold cookie seems crazy strong, to the point where I didn’t really have to try at all once I got it. Obviously it’s sleek and well put together, very striking capsule art. Surprised that red doesn’t show up in game tbh!
I think ultimately the gameplay of “do two basic chess moves, discard one” will wear out its welcome extremely fast for me at least, but I’ve also done a lot of chess puzzles in my life. Maybe more involved puzzles would be good, but feel too much like Gambonanza? Honestly I think you should look at The Duke for inspiration about potential other ways you could have pieces move, could be pretty interesting.
I hope the momentum on this goes well for you! :)
Hello, first of all, thank you for the big feedback. I can basically agree with everything except the part that it feels like Gambonanza. I don’t understand what you mean if you played that game or at least watched its gameplay, these are two different games with completely different mechanics and gameplay. The fact that both are chess and both use a Balatro-style look does not mean they are the same game. In any case, thank you very much for the feedback, I will try to fix everything after the jam
To be clear I meant if you had the player controlling multiple pieces more similar to standard chess puzzles which I think I might be more drawn to, then it might feel more like Gambonanza. As is you’ve definitely differentiated yourself!
oh okay, got it know, sorry!
I love the Balatro/Psychedelic Visuals and even though I horrible at chess I actually found my self to be quite good at this game if you like chess and Balatro you will not stop playing this game!
If Balatro and chess made a child, this would be it. Really well designed and polished game
A really polished Balatro-inspired game! ;D
// With less text or a better presentation on a gadget would be great! > v<
(It's so quiet hard to read with a small screen ><)