Duskers builders Misfit Attic have revealed Under The Crown, a chess-flavoured fantasy roguelike with an Inscryption-style meta-layer and a few attractive 80s CRT visuals. You’re a wizard, tasked with Gathering A Social gathering and braving an offbrand Tron dungeon to retrieve some gold. Your upgradeable social gathering members are based mostly on chess models, and every ground of the dungeon is a grid-based fight puzzle impressed by traditional chess manouevres like Forks and Pins. Here is a trailer.
Misfits Attic founder Tim Keenan calls it a “gateway drug into chess”, however the press launch usually appears extra desirous to dunk on chess than rejoice it, because it straddles the road of being “accessible for newcomers and compelling for specialists”. They wish to promote individuals on the wonders of chess, a gorgeous summary technique recreation that dates again a whole lot of years, whereas additionally reassuring a youthful era of nerds that Under The Crown is totally nothing like chess, a silly non-computer recreation performed by losers that does not even have any magic spells in it.
“Neglect memorized openings, drawn-out endgames, and stalemates,” it reads. “Begin with one piece, a badass wizard, as a substitute of 16 – and bid the tedium of research paralysis adieu.” Sayonara, chess, you monstrous waste of completely good timber! I like you. You are an terrible expertise and I hope all of my pals get hooked on you. Let’s kiss with tongues, you embarrassing plod.
Chess apart, Under The Crown is billed as a “considering particular person’s roguelike” within the fashion of Slay The Spire, which appears a bit imply to different roguelikes. I contemplate the roguelike a reasonably cerebral style by default. It is not like saying “considering particular person’s ballpit”, is it. “Make good performs to seize enemies and survive an ever-changing dungeon,” the press launch goes on. “Imbue the social gathering with talents like Imaginative and prescient for placement flexibility or Shadow Safety, granting a protect whereas on a darkish tile. Purchase spell playing cards and abilities to ramp up all through a run, gathering gold to sate the Emperor, but additionally discovering mysterious runes alongside the best way…”
That dot-dot-dotting most likely pertains to the aforesaid Inscryption-esque meta-layer, which sees you pulling again from a pc inside the pc to reply enigmatic company queries. “From each day stress surveys to unusual rating rituals, the sport is not afraid to interrupt the fourth wall and shock the participant with surprising weirdness,” the press launch provides. I’m making a observe, “anticipate weirdness”. Keenan additionally calls Under The Crown a “massively singleplayer expertise”, with a customized board editor and the power to share your creations on-line.
I’ll forgive all this frenzied advertising and marketing footwork as a result of Misfits Attic are the creators of Duskers – a lonely Lieutenant Gorman simulator, and stable candidate for the title of greatest house recreation. In response to me, anyway: whoever final edited that Greatest Of did not embody it, they usually did not put it on our listing of the greatest horror video games, both. Philistines!
Misfits just lately introduced that they are making a “religious successor” to Duskers that includes ship-building, underneath the working title “Humanity 2.0”. They’re additionally making a “Crusader Kings lite” through which you attempt to manipulate enemy factions into combating one another. Definitely, they have so much occurring as of late.
Under The Crown will launch on PC through Steam Early Entry in This fall 2025, and there is a demo coming on this October’s Steam Subsequent Fest. Learn extra on the aforesaid Steam.
