Fun game, short and quick. I want more content.

peal

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Shotgun King has a very interesting premise, but the execution is lacking. After the very brief honeymoon period, it has run its course.
If you love absurd comedy based around chess and the joke is worth the money, go for it, otherwise don’t.

If you see this game and want it, it is not about visuals, music or pixel art.
Interestingly enough, the game has been lovingly made and the visual gags of the cards are well done, but this game is small, it is just the typical chess board in pixel art style, but the black king got a shotgun.
Don’t get me wrong, it is intriguing to see such a concept brought to live, and the novelty is a breath of fresh air. An out there concept that plays on a very well-known game and then makes it a turn based roguelike, beating every stronger boards to finally confront the main antagonist. It is left to the reader to figure who that guy is.
You don’t care about the nuances implied by the Black King having a shotgun and how it balances chess, you want to shoot white pieces and see how such a ridiculous concept translated in the uneventful game of chess.

And this is when the game succeeds to then fall flat.
Initially the power of the shotgun is interesting, everything is new. Clearing a board for an upgrade is exciting, and it intrigues what upgrades are possible and the restart option after falling trap to your own lacking aiming and or chess skills.
But slowly you realize there are not that many upgrades, few of them significantly changing the play style the player has.
Your own upgrades mattering less than the upgrades than the upgrades of the white board.
And this is when it becomes boring, because every run feels the same.
Only very few upgrades actually change the game flow and make the situation interesting. Like the blowback upgrade which forces you to move one space back after shooting, so that the player has to think more steps ahead, which is amazing.
But it is the only one upgrade that brings such a unique feature, and after that it becomes less and less interesting over time.
I think the premise got potential, and maybe this game could long-term meaningly evolve, but 10 bucks for 1 to 2 hours of okayish quality (as after that you will drop the game) is not worth it for most people.
And 5 bucks on sale is barely able to justify it, if you really want to play the game.

There is a very specific target audience of this game, the subreddit “r/anarchychess”. But if you don’t share a type of humor, you won’t get much enjoyment out of Shotgun King, and do you really intend to buy another game you will not play through?
Shotgun King really is that kind of backlog game.
I can respect the execution on such a premise and from an artistic standpoint, it is valuable. But as a product, Shotgun King is very underwhelming.

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