RogueChess: The King’s March

RogueChess is a tactical chess roguelite where every piece is a soldier, every capture matters, and losing your King ends the run.

Lead a growing army across eight handcrafted encounters, survive dangerous board modifiers, defeat the Black Knight, and corner the Black King in a final checkmate. Your pieces retain their experience between stages, but captured units are permanently lost.

Traditional chess movement meets an action-point system. Move and use abilities in any order, reposition allies, create defensive formations, and study the enemy’s announced intentions before committing to your turn.

Build Your Army

Begin each run with only a King and a Pawn. Recruit additional pieces from shops and build any composition you want, with space for up to 16 units.

Surviving pieces gain experience after every stage. Individual captures, trials, and battlefield achievements unlock new evolutionary paths:

• Pawn into Knight, Bishop, or Rook
• Knight into Dragon Knight
• Bishop into Royal Mage or Queen
• Rook into General or Queen

Powerful forms require more than experience. Complete unique trials, reach the far side of the board, and sometimes make a permanent sacrifice to finish an evolution.

Read the Battlefield

Enemies announce their intentions before acting. Their planned movements, targets, abilities, and lethal squares are displayed directly on the board.

Use that information to protect your King, rescue valuable pieces, prepare counterattacks, or deliberately risk a unit for a better position. If an announced action becomes invalid, enemies cannot secretly select a new victim.

Face Tactical Encounters

Fight through an escalating campaign featuring:

• Eight combat stages
• Four deterministic shops
• Pressure portals that summon reinforcements
• Unstable tiles that collapse after being telegraphed
• A tactical Black Knight mini-boss
• A final battle decided by true checkmate
• Persistent experience, achievements, bestiary entries, and cosmetic unlocks
• A challenge mode without permanent power bonuses

The Black Knight follows the movement rules of a Knight but combines Shadow Leap with chained captures. Defeating it requires careful positioning—not reducing a health bar.

Tactical AI

Enemies are controlled by a deterministic tree-search engine. They evaluate captures, defenses, King safety, future threats, promotions, abilities, and combined actions across the entire enemy army.

The same game rules power movement previews, enemy planning, threat overlays, and combat resolution. There are no hidden accuracy rolls and no surprise retargeting.

Controls and Shortcuts

The entire game can be played with the mouse.

• Left Mouse Button: Select pieces, choose destinations, confirm actions, and navigate menus
• A: Activate or cancel the selected piece’s ability
• Space: End the current turn
• T: Open or close the selected piece’s evolution tree
• Esc: Open the pause menu, go back, or close the current screen

The evolution tree can also be opened from a piece’s status panel. Hover over any form to inspect its requirements, movement, abilities, and individual progress.

Accessibility and Options

• English and Brazilian Portuguese
• Separate master, music, and sound-effect volume controls
• Windowed and fullscreen modes
• Multiple window sizes
• Optional reduced camera shake
• Threat indicators that use shapes and patterns, not color alone
• Autosaving after turns, purchases, deployment, and evolution

Can You Complete the March?

Preserve your veterans, evolve the right pieces, anticipate every enemy plan, and guide your King safely through the final rank.

One careless move can cost a soldier.

One blocked path can end the campaign.

And when the King falls, the march is over.