There’s a lot to be said for games that hone in on a core game play idea and ruthlessly pursue that without the additional cruft that seems to plague every AAA title. The developers well know going into it that they’re narrowing their audience significantly, but that’s usually the point: create something that the superfans will really like which, hopefully, drags in those on the periphery. Such is how I came across Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate, ostensibly recommended to me by Steam because I’ve played a handful of weird Roguelikes in the past but wouldn’t really consider myself a fan of them. Shotgun King hasn’t really changed that stance (for reasons I will go into) but I can certainly appreciate a game like this that starts with an insane premise and builds up from there.
Abandoned by his kingdom, the black king turns to violence. Taking ahold of his trusty royal shotgun he seeks out revenge against his rival kingdom and those who left his rule for theirs. There is no question that this is a simple quest for revenge: to bring down all that have opposed him and left him with nothing left to lose. In a world where wars were fought with swords and shields you weild and immense power, but even that might not be enough to see you reach your goal.
As someone who has fond memories of playing Battle Chess and other lo-fi chess games as a young lad the pixelart aesthetic that the developers went for here brought with it a strange kind of nostalgia for a time gone by. Indeed it’s very true to the aesthetic, eschewing any kind of modern improvements or lighting effects and even going so far as to limit the colour pallette, just as it would have been in days of gaming past. The graphics, whilst very well done, are definitely not the focus of this game though. No that comes from the pursuit of lead based revenge.
Whilst the base of the game is that of chess, with most of the rules of the game still applying, you will have only one piece: the black king. You’re armed with a shotgun which can take out pawns in one hit, most larger pieces in 2 and the top tier pieces needing quite a few hits before going down. The shotgun has a couple core stats: power (the damage it can do in one shot, will be split among those hit), range (the number of squares it can hit), and arc (how far it spreads). Each floor you complete will then present you with a choice of cards which provide both you and your opponent a buff. These buffs are randomly generated, hence the Roguelike tag, so no two playthroughs will be the same. As you keep progressing the buffs will get more impactful but so will your opponent, ensuring that you’ll be needing multiple runs before you’ll get anywhere near winning a game.
If I’m honest the first couple games were something of a chore. Whilst it’s quite easy to win the first couple floors the challenge quickly ramps up if you’re not too careful with the cards that you choose. You’d think that the choice would be relatively easy, choose the cards that give you the greatest advantage, but that’s not always clear. Some decisions you make early on could make your live a living hell later on, the buffs you received not sufficient to deal with the mess you’ve created for yourself. Once you’re past that initial stage you can start to repeatedly clearing the first handful of levels without too much drama, but that’s when the RNG part of the Roguelike starts to have real impacts.
Your runs are then going to be heavily dictated by the drops you get with broken combos or multiples of certain cards dictating how easy or hard it is. This is where I’d like to have a small amount of control over the cards that I received, maybe just having a deck of cards that gets randomly doled out to me so that I can’t control when I get them, but I can at least know I will get them eventually so I can strategize a bit more. To be fair to Shotgun King this is an issue I have with all Roguelikes (which is why I don’t typically play them) so the randomness of the core game mechanic might not be such a big issue for you.
One thing the game doesn’t do particularly well is explain how certain mechanics work or how to use them. I wasn’t aware for a good long while that “souls” cards, the little card on the right, represent a captured piece that you can use to execute a move using their moveset. This led to many untimely demises of my king, as there were numerous times I got into positions which seemed unwinnable through no fault of my own which were solved by using the souls card. The shield system, which is basically a “life” which is used if you would move yourself into check, also isn’t explained so you’d often click the same move multiple times and end up losing a game because of it. Once you know these things it’s much easier to make more consistent progress, although still very much at the behest of RNJesus.
Despite the issues I take with Roguelikes in general I did enjoy the challenge that Shotgun King put forward for a good while. The idea itself is absolutely hilarious, and getting some broken combos did make for some fun engagements. However, like all Roguelikes I find myself playing, the repetition and lack of control over the core game loop started to wear on me. For fans of the genre though I’m sure this is right up their alley and for them there’s definitely countless hours of fun to be had unloading shell after shell into the white army.
Rating: 7.0/10
Shotgun King: The Last Checkmate is available on PC right now for $8.99. Total play time was 1.8 hours.
