chess

Duskers developers Misfit Attic have revealed Below The Crown, a chess-flavoured fantasy roguelike with an Inscryption-style meta-layer and some sexy 80s CRT visuals. You are a wizard, tasked with Gathering A Party and braving an offbrand Tron dungeon to retrieve some gold. Your upgradeable party members are based on chess units, and each floor of the dungeon is a grid-based combat puzzle inspired by classic chess manouevres like Forks and Pins. Here’s a trailer.

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Misfits Attic founder Tim Keenan calls it a “gateway drug into chess”, but the press release often seems more eager to dunk on chess than celebrate it, as it straddles the line of being “accessible for newcomers and compelling for experts”. They want to sell people on the wonders of chess, a beautiful abstract strategy game that dates back hundreds of years, while also reassuring a younger generation of nerds that Below The Crown is absolutely nothing like chess, a stupid non-computer game played by losers that doesn’t even have any magic spells in it.

“Forget memorized openings, drawn-out endgames, and stalemates,” it reads. “Start with one piece, a badass wizard, instead of 16 – and bid the tedium of analysis paralysis adieu.” Sayonara, chess, you monstrous waste of perfectly good timber! I love you. You’re an awful experience and I hope all of my friends get hooked on you. Let’s kiss with tongues, you embarrassing plod.

Chess aside, Below The Crown is billed as a “thinking person’s roguelike” in the style of Slay The Spire, which seems a bit mean to other roguelikes. I consider the roguelike a fairly cerebral genre by default. It’s not like saying “thinking person’s ballpit”, is it. “Make smart plays to capture enemies and survive an ever-changing dungeon,” the press release goes on. “Imbue the party with abilities like Vision for placement flexibility or Shadow Protection, granting a shield while on a dark tile. Acquire spell cards and skills to ramp up throughout a run, collecting gold to sate the Emperor, but also finding mysterious runes along the way…”

That dot-dot-dotting probably pertains to the aforesaid Inscryption-esque meta-layer, which sees you pulling back from a computer within the computer to answer enigmatic corporate queries. “From daily stress surveys to strange ranking rituals, the game isn’t afraid to break the fourth wall and surprise the player with unexpected weirdness,” the press release adds. I am making a note, “expect weirdness”. Keenan also calls Below The Crown a “massively singleplayer experience”, with a custom board editor and the ability to share your creations online.

I will forgive all this frenzied marketing footwork because Misfits Attic are the creators of Duskers – a lonely Lieutenant Gorman simulator, and solid candidate for the title of best space game. According to me, anyway: whoever last edited that Best Of didn’t include it, and they didn’t put it on our list of the best horror games, either. Philistines!

Misfits recently announced that they’re making a “spiritual successor” to Duskers featuring ship-building, under the working title “Humanity 2.0”. They’re also making a “Crusader Kings lite” in which you try to manipulate enemy factions into fighting each other. Certainly, they’ve got a lot going on these days.

Below The Crown will launch on PC via Steam Early Access in Q4 2025, and there’s a demo coming in this October’s Steam Next Fest. Read more on the aforesaid Steam.

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