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ARCADE
Rogue Piece Review: A Chess Roguelike That Made Me Forget to Be Annoyed (Briefly)
I've played every "chess but different" game since Battle Chess made me wait 30 seconds per animation in 1988. This one actually kept me clicking through turns instead of alt-tabbing to complain on forums. Barely.
Paul
February 13, 2026
7.3
Overall Score
"Look, I've reviewed approximately eight thousand indie chess variants at this point, and most of them make me question why developers won't just let Garry Kasparov's legacy rest in peace."
First Impressions (Or: Why I Didn't Close It After 30 Seconds)
I saw "chess roguelike" and immediately prepared my rant about how developers keep trying to fix chess when it's been fine for 1,500 years. Then I started playing and something unprecedented happened: I kept playing. The hook is simple but actually works â you're a single chess piece that changes form every turn. One moment you're a knight doing your little L-shaped hops, the next you're a rook bulldozing across the board. It sounds gimmicky, and honestly it IS gimmicky, but it's the good kind of gimmick that makes you think three moves ahead while praying you'll randomly become a queen next turn. The game was made for a game jam, which usually means "barely functional tech demo," but OcO clearly spent their time making something that actually functions instead of just throwing in particle effects and calling it a day. I'm as shocked as you are.
The Core Loop: Chess Meets Organized Chaos
Here's where Rogue Piece earns its keep. You're dropped on a chess board with enemy pieces that follow actual chess movement rules, except they're all trying to kill you AND each other. This creates this beautiful chaos where a bishop might take out the rook that was about to murder you, buying you another turn to scramble away as a suddenly-useless pawn. The strategic depth comes from never knowing what piece you'll be next, so you can't plan more than one move with certainty. Will you be able to escape that corner as a bishop, or will you transform into a knight and be completely trapped? It's like playing regular chess while someone keeps changing which piece you're controlling, which should be infuriating but somehow works. You collect gold by taking enemy pieces, then spend it on upgrades between levels. The upgrade system is straightforward â more health, better abilities, stat boosts â nothing revolutionary but it doesn't need to be when the core gameplay already has enough going on. My main complaint is that around level 8 or 9, the game stops asking "how clever are you?" and starts asking "how lucky are you?" which is never a fun transition.
Difficulty Curve: From "This Is Fine" to "Oh No"
Early levels ease you in gently, letting you learn the rhythm of adaptation and chess tactics. By level 5, things get spicy. By level 8, the board is absolutely swarming with enemy pieces and you're praying to the RNG gods for favorable transformations. This is where Rogue Piece shows its roguelite DNA â sometimes you get a great run with solid upgrades and lucky piece transformations. Other times you get cornered as a pawn three turns in a row and die feeling cheated. The difficulty scaling is aggressive, maybe too aggressive for casual players who just wanted a clever chess variant. I appreciate that the game doesn't coddle you, but there's a difference between "challenging" and "the developer clearly expects you to die here." That said, when you DO survive a seemingly impossible board state through clever positioning and a clutch queen transformation, it feels genuinely earned. Those moments kept me coming back despite the frustration, which hasn't happened since Into the Breach made me forget to eat lunch in 2018.
Visuals and Audio: Perfectly Adequate
The pixel art is clean, colorful, and readable, which is literally all a chess game needs to be. Every piece is immediately recognizable, the board is clear, and the UI doesn't get in the way. Is it groundbreaking? No. Did I spend any time thinking about the graphics while playing? Also no, which means they're doing their job. The retro aesthetic is obviously a safe choice for solo developers who don't have budget for fancy 3D models, but at least OcO committed to a cohesive style instead of mixing art assets from three different packs. The audio exists. I turned it down after ten minutes because the sound effects were getting repetitive, which is standard procedure for me with any game that involves turn-based combat. If there's music, I honestly don't remember it, which either means it was forgettable or I was too focused on not dying. Probably both. For a game jam project, the presentation is more than sufficient, though I wouldn't be showing screenshots to impress anyone.
What Actually Works Here
The enemy-on-enemy combat is legitimately brilliant. Watching enemy pieces take each other out creates this dynamic puzzle where you're not just avoiding threats â you're manipulating them into each other's paths. Position yourself so that aggressive rook has to pass through an enemy bishop's diagonal? *Chef's kiss.* That's the kind of emergent gameplay that makes strategy games sing, and Rogue Piece nails it. The random piece transformation could have been pure frustration, but the game gives you just enough information and control through your upgrades that it feels like managed chaos rather than coin-flip luck. When you die, it usually feels like you could have played better, not that the game screwed you (until the later levels, anyway). The upgrade system between levels gives you meaningful choices without overwhelming you with options, and the pacing of runs is perfect for "one more try" addiction. I genuinely lost track of time playing this, which hasn't happened with a chess variant since... actually, I'm not sure it's ever happened with a chess variant. OcO clearly understands what makes both chess AND roguelikes compelling, then found the overlap instead of just stapling them together.
What Needs Work (Or: Why I Eventually Stopped Playing)
The difficulty spike around level 8-10 needs rebalancing. It goes from "challenging" to "I need perfect RNG" too quickly, which cuts runs short in unsatisfying ways. The upgrade pool could be deeper â by run three or four, you've seen everything available and you're just picking the same optimal upgrades again. More variety in enemy behavior beyond standard chess rules would help later levels feel less samey. Maybe pieces with modified movement patterns, or special abilities that break chess conventions? The audio desperately needs more variety if you're going to play for extended sessions. And frankly, the game could use more feedback when you're about to die â sometimes I'd be checking if I could safely move somewhere and miss that an enemy could reach me through a path I didn't immediately see. A simple "you'll die if you go there" indicator would save frustration without dumbing down the strategy. These are all fixable issues though, and for a game jam project, I'm being nitpicky. The foundation is genuinely solid.
Rating Breakdown
Quality
7
Surprisingly polished for a game jam entry â I encountered zero crashes and the UI didn't make me want to throw my mouse, which is more than I can say for most indie chess variants.
Innovation
8
Combining chess with roguelite mechanics where you randomly change pieces each turn is genuinely clever, and I haven't seen enemy pieces attacking each other in a chess game since... actually, never.
Value
9
It's name-your-own-price, which means free if you're cheap like me, and I got several hours out of it before the difficulty spike made me ragequit â that's absurd value.
Gameplay
7
The ever-shifting piece mechanic keeps you on your toes in ways regular chess stopped doing for me in 1994, though the difficulty ramp eventually feels less "challenging" and more "the game decided you're done now."
Audio/Visual
6
Functional pixel art with that retro aesthetic every indie dev defaults to these days, but at least it's clean and readable â the audio exists, which is about all I can say about it.
Replayability
7
The randomization and upgrade paths give you reason to try again after dying, and I actually did replay it multiple times before remembering I had twelve other games to review.
What Didn't Annoy Me
The piece-shifting mechanic is actually innovative instead of just "chess with a modifier" like the hundred other variants I've suffered through
Enemy pieces attacking each other creates emergent strategy that kept me engaged beyond the first five minutes
Name-your-own-price means you have zero excuse not to try it, and you'll get your money's worth even if you pay nothing
Runs are perfectly paced for "just one more attempt" addiction without feeling like padding
The upgrade system gives you meaningful choices without overwhelming you with decision paralysis
Actually polished and stable for a game jam entry, which is rarer than it should be
What Made Me Sigh
Difficulty spike around level 8 transitions from "fair challenge" to "pray for good RNG" too abruptly
Upgrade variety runs thin after a few runs, leading to repetitive optimal builds
Audio is forgettable at best and repetitive at worst, I muted it before finishing my first session
Later levels need more mechanical variety beyond just "more enemies" to stay interesting
Could use better visual feedback for imminent threats when you're planning moves quickly
Final Verdict
Look, I've reviewed approximately eight thousand indie chess variants at this point, and most of them make me question why developers won't just let Garry Kasparov's legacy rest in peace. Rogue Piece actually justifies its existence by genuinely merging chess strategy with roguelite unpredictability in ways that create new tactical considerations rather than just adding randomness for chaos's sake. The ever-shifting piece mechanic could have been gimmicky nonsense, but OcO clearly playtested enough to find the sweet spot where it's challenging without being arbitrary. Yes, the difficulty curve gets mean, and yes, you'll see everything the game has to offer within a few hours, but those hours are legitimately engaging in ways most chess variants never achieve. For free (or whatever you want to pay), this is absolutely worth your time if you have any interest in either chess or roguelikes. It won't replace Into the Breach in my regular rotation, but it earned a permanent spot on my "actually decent jam games" list, which has maybe twelve entries after five years of reviewing. That's the most reluctant compliment I can give: I didn't uninstall it immediately after finishing this review.
Rogue Piece
Genre
Arcade
Developer
OcO
Platform
Windows
Release Date
Jan 1, 2024
Rating
7.3
/10
Tags
chess
roguelite
turn-based
arcade
pixel-art
strategy
indie
casual
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