Warhammer 40,000: Regicide
‘The King is Dead. Long Live the King’
‘Warhammer: Regicide’ is a gloriously bloody reimagining of one of the world’s oldest turn-based strategy games - Chess - set against the violent backdrop of the Warhammer:40K universe. Gorgeous visuals, tactically diverse gameplay and unapologetic violence elevate a classic board game to quite something else entirely.
Campaign: Act 1 - consisting of 10 playable missions - is currently active in Early Access. Act’s 2 and 3 are to follow shortly. (This section will continue to be updated)
– Real player with 162.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Warhammer 40K Games.
I bought Warhammer 40,000: Regicide last Summer when I was on a Games Workshop kick. It was my intention to go for a complete collection of all the Games Workshop licensed games, and Regicide had the added benefit of me having seen some coverage on it from TotalBiscuit. It looked more of an oddity than anything else, but I managed to see it through to the end.
The game is essentially Chess set in the 40K universe, using the Space Marines and Orks as chess pieces to simulate the battles. How Regicide differs from Chess is that once you have moved, you can use abilities of your pieces on an Initiative Points system to attack your opponent. This works on a percentile mechanic, and usually amounts to shooting them, or attacking them in close combat if you’re in an adjacent square. It takes longer to eliminate a piece using this method, but if you focus enough attacks in one place, you can take out entire armies without having to capture anything; the usual method for Chess. This is augmented by additional abilities from the various pieces: Devastators (Bishops) have the ability to focus their attacks to do more damage at the expense of being able to move, Assault Marines (Knights) have increased attack power after they move and can also throw Krak (anti-armour) grenades, and so on. This creates an additional strategic layer to the game and sets it apart from either Chess or 40K in a way that, for the most part, works reasonably well.
– Real player with 68.0 hrs in game
Unlock The King 3
So, you haven’t learned your lesson and you’re here for your third outing on Black Friday. Set your watch and hit the panic button, because it’s go time. When the clock strikes midnight and myriads of strangers produce an assortment of cutting utensils—some legal and some not so legal—you realize you goofed, and it’s time to abort for the third time in a row. You shove strangers, but not too many since it’ll make it easier for the devil to follow you. Dodge descending blades, leap over toppled grandmas, and slap on your gravity boots so you can take to the walls and bypass the mob. You now understand the gameplay concept of Unlock the King 3.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Sokoban Games.
The bugs, poor camera, and annoying 3D boards of Unlock the King 2 are gone, but now the camera is Y-inverted, there are fewer levels, and it feels as though the developer just didn’t care about the quality of the puzzles anymore. So many sections of puzzles, including pieces and buttons, go unused – and not even in a “red herring” manner. They don’t serve to distract or confuse because there’s no reason to consider them.
It’s cheap and I didn’t hate it, but it’s not really worth the time. The first in the trilogy was the best.
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
Unlock The King
Shuffle chess pieces to clear a path for its titular centerpiece in Unlock the King. While its 100 stages aren’t of consistent quality, the sheer quantity offered for its minimum price point make it an easy shoe-in for brain teaser fans.
Similar to its developer’s other works, UTK is about making way for its central figure. Apart from pawns, every piece makes an appearance here, differing primarily in quantity and stage geometry to keep you invested. It’s a simple formula that’s guaranteed to work, though it is admittedly repetitive. Bread-and-butter chess boards make way for switches in its late half, transforming the playing field and opening up new possibilities.
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Futuristic Games.
Imagine it’s Black Friday, and you’ve made the misguided decision to take advantage of some deal you are convinced is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (if only because you went and got trampled). When the clock strikes midnight and myriads of strangers produce an assortment of cutting utensils—some legal and some not so legal—you realize you goofed, and it’s time to abort. You shove strangers, dodge descending blades, leap over toppled grandmas, and shimmy through paths so narrow they would make a spelunker fill their adult diaper. You now understand the gameplay concept of Unlock the King.
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game
Battle Chess 4000
Battle Chess 4000 takes the classic game of chess and rushes it headlong into the future. Chess pieces become animated space-age characters, created from state-of-the-art digitized clay models; with the pieces animated moves being both intriguing and hilarious. Not only that but Battle Chess 4000 has a library of over 300,000 opening moves and an artificial intelligence that can handle any level of opponent.
Battle Chess 4000 features include:
- State-of-the-art animation from digitized clay models
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
I played one game on easy. I’m pretty sure I won? I’m not 100% on that… but an interesting side note is that I had 4 queens on one board and that was not where I won. (Although I guess technically I won in all of them? I think?)
For some reason the AI sent a a king back in time after I had it in check in the, I guess, present. Not a great move with two adjacent kings on the board since it made it easy to check it in the past, and that “past” was the first leg of a new timeline so it had nowhere left to go forward or back in time and was blocked by another piece in the adjacent alternate timeline
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
Checkmate the enemy king with my queen from a parallel timeline, just for them to stall by sending their knight back in time to make the past the present. Then he checked my king from a parallel timeline with the same knight. Luckily I sniped the knight with a random pawn FROM THE FUTURE. He was on borrowed time…
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Frozen Synapse
I’ve bought this game three times now and I’d buy it again if I had more free time. I bought it first as a standalone Linux game. Later I picked up another copy in a bundle that gave me a Steam key for it (it was part of a bundle and there were other games in that bundle I liked, but having a copy of Frozen Synapse on Steam was the sweetener that sealed the deal for me) and I subsequently bought it for Android because I couldn’t get enough of it.
My biggest problem with this game is it plays to my own desire to optimize and speculate on what my opponent is going to do in a turn-based strategy game. The core mechanic tends to lead me to a decision-paralysis. And I love the game intensely for it.
– Real player with 601.6 hrs in game
I love it when a plan comes together, and Frozen Synapse is my favourite turn-based game.
It’s similar to ground operations of X-COM, for example, but in a purer, simpler form. There’s no base management, inventory, RPG elements. All units of the same type have identical stats. And, unlike X-COM, RNG does not make much of an impact on outcomes of firefights, if any. The typical ‘chance to hit’ mechanic is replaced with ‘time to hit’. If enemy unit is in cover, your unit will need more time to hit him; if enemy units runs into your stationary unit, your unit will shoot first because he had a bonus to this timer, and the enemy had a penalty for running. Thus, if you can predict what your opponent is about to do, you can be 100% sure what will happen when they encounter one of your units. If.
– Real player with 93.5 hrs in game
Unlock The King 2
2D is replaced by 3D puzzles. It is more complicated now, harder to manage and understand all the possible move options and possibilities.
At least Undo option is added - that I missed during the Part 1. But this option is buggy sometimes, made the piece invisible.
Level 14 - this was not explained before that you can rotate the view with your right mouse button. Discovered that the second before I was giving up and planned to look for solution. And the rotating stops working sometimes, you need to close the game to make it work again.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
upd: What you can read below is my original review of the first version of this game. I was pretty upset with my first impression which didn’t live up to my expectations, as you can see it. After I posted this review, the developers were fast to respond, and they fixed things I noted here, and I really, really appreciate it. I played this game to the completion and I must say that now it is a good example of a minimalistic puzzle. So feel free to try it and support the developers. Also, I want to thank Raphael, one of the devs, for the answer you can also read below. It means a lot for me, too.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Prismata
The easiest way to describe Prismata is to call it a RTS-themed (think Starcraft) chess. Chess comparison comes from the fact it has 0 RNG of any kind and no hidden info so the game is deterministic i.e. one of the players has a guaranteed win based on the starting positions. But just like Chess, Prismata is incredibly complex where solving it is impossible.
Players start with 6 or 7 Drones that harvest gold (2nd player starts with 1 extra drone to compensate), gold buys you technology structures that produce blue/red/green resources (not official names, but that’s the accepted naming convention in the community). Subsequently gold and tech resources buy attackers/defenders and your goal is to kill opponent’s units while protecting your fragile drones and attackers. Sounds simple at its core.
– Real player with 981.4 hrs in game
EDIT: I almost don’t believe it. Within two days the devs released an update that addressed several of these issues. That’s just awesome. You hardly see that happen for any game these days.
Thumbs up for quality of life updates, and a great strategy game. There’s still room for improvement with drone defaulting to block and such, oh well. Game is good though.
Outdated:
I really want to love Prismata. At a glance, this could be the first truly free to play strategy “card” game without any of the pay to win nonsense, and a potentially fantastic game at that. But for a game that tries so hard to be different than all the others in its genre, why are there so many familiar disappointments?
– Real player with 203.9 hrs in game
CHESS with LASERS
I was a beta tester for the game during the summer, and felt it was really going somewhere. It turned out beyond my expectations! The game kept upgrading, both graphic-wise and strategy-wise, as the developer added new pieces and maps each time more complex and fun. Also, the addition of the level editor makes the game all the more replayable.
**You should definitely buy the game, even only to support the developer.
To make it short, the game is awesome!**
– Real player with 24.2 hrs in game
If you like to play chess and have some sci-fri of it, you have come to the correct place, this game have chess with laser that spice thing up.
Here at this game you can use different type of piece for your own each strategy.
What more you can create your own custom map and play with your friend to have some fun.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game