Game EXP: Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate (PC)

Shotgun King: The  Final Checkmate

Systems: Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & Series S/X, and Windows

Release Date: May 12, 2022

Publisher: Punkcake Délicieux, Headbang Club, Goblinz Publishing

Developer: Punkcake Délicieux, Headbang Club

I really enjoy the game of chess.  I am also not a great chess player, but I love a novel take on chess (even if the execution isn't perfect) be it in the form of Chess Knights; Viking Lands, a puzzle game centered around how chess pieces traditionally move, as well as this game, Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate where you play as a solitary king going up against a rebelling force of opposing chess pieces.  Armed with a shotgun.

The first thing to get across is that this is not a serious chess game if the title didn't already give that away.  You play as a single King chess piece, armed with a shotgun that allows for ranged attacks with the common goal of taking out the opposing King.  Apart from that, there are a whole bunch of modifiers to this game as you progress through the 10 stages/floors on your way to quell the uprising.  Yes, there is a bit of a story here, which considering the premise of the game, is equally silly, with the player taking control of a King who is violent and oppressive towards his subjects and you are attempting to put down the rebellion.

There are a couple of modes to play, but only one from the start and the primary one, and the only one that I have actually played extensively is the Story Mode, where you play through 10 stages/floors and a final boss fight.  At the end of each floor, you have the choice of two randomly drawn cards where one is a bonus modifier for you and the other affects the computer opponent, often to your own detriment.  For example, your choices are:

• Gain a +1 bonus to your shotgun power / The enemy gains an additional three pawns
  or
• Every 10 Turns, +1 firepower / Removes 1 Knight Add 2 Pawns (Pawns +1 Speed)

While the individual bonuses may not seem all that significant in the moment or by themselves, the card bonuses can stack and carry over to each subsequent floor.  In one instance, I had selected the first above group of cards (+1 firepower vs. 3 enemy pawns) and on a subsequent floor selected the card that gave me an additional +2 to damage after I killed a pawn and the enemy gained the ability to have an additional hit point to the bishop and they could heal surrounding pieces instead of moving.  While somewhat random as far as the cards that are dealt for you to choose from, I have noticed that on the fourth floor, that the opposing card always introduces a Queen to the enemy's side which is always a danger in chess.  But as there are, I believe, 55 cards for each side to choose from, I always feel that I end up having to choose between the lesser of two evils.

One thing that the devs added that I really like are protections from accidentally moving yourself into checkmate, or at least two per turn.  If you select to move your King into check, the game buzzes at you and refuses to move your piece, but you can only have this happen twice per turn; at the start of your next turn, your protections reset.  But, since in this game, the King is armed with a shotgun (or grenades, or ranged magic, or a sword that I still haven't figured out yet), if you happen to kill a piece that was blocking another piece from attacking the king, then that piece will automatically move and kill your King.

Unless, of course, you have the Black Mist card, which penalizes you with -1 to your shotgun range, but protects you from death once per floor.

Shotgun King is an absurdist take on chess that starts out fun, but by the fourth floor, becomes progressively more stressful as the enemy bonuses continue to pile up and taking out the enemy King (or the theocracy if you drew the Theocracy card which replaces the King with a Bishop and requires all Bishops on the board to die to win the round) grows ever more difficult.  There are other guns to unlock, which require you to have certain stats, I think, when you beat the game and as I have only beaten the game once without trying to do a gun-unlocking run, I cannot say right now if that is the case. It's just a fun, light-hearted take on an easy-to-play, difficult-to-master game that can be played in a minute if you're not paying attention and last as long as you can survive in Endless Mode.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Well I Am King.

P.S.  There are plenty of other rules that I have not gone into such as the reloading mechanic, soul cards, and other intricacies of the cards you draw, but that would just bog this article down further than trying to write about an 18-month-old take on a 500+ year-old game.

P.P.S.  This has also recently become a favorite game for The Squire to ask me to play in the morning, which we just call "The King Game" since I'm not comfortable introducing the concept of shotguns into his life yet