Fair tbh. We learned a lot from this game and we're aware of what we did right/wrong. Also, FGC never completely shit on us and they've been very helpful and kind throughout the whole process - they always provided quality feedback (sometimes constructive, sometimes not) but overall, they voiced what they liked and didn't like. With that and videos like this, we're taking everything and going back to the drawing board. So thank you for voicing your overall feelings about the game. That being said, this isn't the end for BadRez Games - we're just getting started.
Let's go! Checkmate showdown was my favorite release of last year and made my friends play it with me a lot. Will your next project be another fighting game-chess hybrid? or will you guys be going in another direction?
This video made a lot of good points but was rather negative, I think mostly cause of the price. It may not be a nation wide e sport, but what Checkmate Showdown is is a really great game to come back to from time to time. Really fun fluid combo system, and the chess is well balanced with the fighting mechanics. There's a reason to play good chess, but really boils down to fighting well.
Good to here. As much as I was critical of the game, it's no easy task trying to combine two complex elements, and I respect that y'all took a real genuine shot at it.
On paper this should have been my game of the year. I really wanted to like it as I play both chess and fighting games. I'm a huge advocate of indie fighting games too so I hope it made irs money back. They seemed to spend a lot of it on advertising, for an indie game. Unfortunately the fighting component was too watered down for me. I lke other simplified fighters like footsies, divekick, fantasy strike, but this one just didn't feel good to play. The more disappointing thing to me is that I didnt enjoy the chess aspect either because it doesn't really reward playing good chess. You can make a game losing blunder with a piece, then win the duel and improve your board position as if the OPPONENT made the blunder. You can't actually checkmate the king because there IS NO concept of check or checkmate in the game. In fact, sometimes a badly placed king is at advantage because there might be a rook or something giving an assist. In real chess it doesn't matter if a piece can recapture a piece after you would lose your king. You would still just lose by checkmate! A castled position is way worse than it should be because if they sacrifice a piece for a pawn like in a Greek Gift, normally this is only sound if the attacker gets compensation in other ways, like capturing a hanging piece. Here the sacrificial piece can blow up the kings life bar too, or even just win you the game. I bought up to the devs how this really weakens the king as a defensive piece but they didn't seem to get it. Anyway this doesnt necessarily mean the chess aspect is worse. It's effectively a variant with different rules and tactics. So it's not exactly chess. But it's also not much of a fighter either. So i ultimately gave it a pass after trying the demo. Maybe it will get better with time, who knows.
Thank you for giving the Chess player's perspective on this. Makes me feel like if I had taken the time to learn Chess via Chess.com like the game suggests, I would have come back to the game liking it less because of how the game breaks the rules of it.
@@GohLow I will say that all chess players are not a monolith, Dacidbro really seems to like the game and he's better than me at fighters and perhaps chess too. I just personally don't like how "swingy" the chess aspect is compared to real chess. In chess evaluation, the "centipawn" tells you how advantaged the board position is. 1 centipawn is 1/100 of a pawn. An "inaccurate" move weakens your position by 50 centipawns or more. A "Mistake" is losing 100 centipawns and a "blunder" loses 300 centipawns, or the value of a minor piece like a bishop or a knight. If you try to a capture a minor piece with a minor piece in checkmate showdown and lose the duel, you lost an entire piece (worth about 3 whole pawns or 300 centipawns) instead of the opponent. So it's like blundering.. twice!
i have two main criticism of cms, and thats that the game is poorly optimized, and that the game isnt very indepth. i know these arent super apperent criticisms, but between the fact that my computer struggles to run the game period, and the fact that the combat doesnt feel good imo. i also think the fact it doesnt teach you chess is very intresting, it wasnt something i thought about becuase im already very big into chess and fighting games.
Probably because the only thing about those games is chess, so you'd only buy it if you knew how to play chess. This game was courting two audiences, with there being no guarantee that the people coming from Fighting Games would know how to play chess. Give me so much as a 5-minute tutorial, that's all I ask.
As a concept its fantastic. I think thats what makes it more frustrating. The concept is there but the execution is severely lacking. On top of that, like you said, the solutions are very simple things that shouldve been thought of in the concept stages of development. Forget starfield, this was my gaming letdown of the year
Wow, this must be the most brutal review I’ve seen on your channel 😅 but I totally see where you’re coming from on this!! It really seems like a chess game for people who like chess and want a bit of a twist on it - which is fine if it made it clear that was the target audience. I’m friends with a guy who plays a lot of chess, I’d be curious what he thought. But I doubt he would want to spend the $20 to try it out. It’s a bit of a shame the steam sale just ended because I think this game was half off, maybe I could have persuaded him to try it at that lower price. I kind of have an idea for a twist on this but using backgammon instead of chess 🤔
You'd think that'd be their approach, but they advertised a lot in the fighting game space, only to completely not account for the Fighter-Who-Doesn't-Know-Chess player. It's really odd. I think they coulda gotten away with this if it was Free-To-Play and they sold different table skins and piece skins and the like. I wanna say this is my first negative review since the GBA Mortal Kombat video from like two years ago.
That was a brutal takedown towards the end. I was thinking at the start when you brought up accessibility that chess is pretty unintuitive to me. Shame a unique concept just didn't get enough to it, the first half of the video sounded pretty positive. But even with a thriving online community, I'm not interested in games dependent on online multiplayer to have content.
That's how writing it went. I had my angle of "This game does the fighting game portion interestingly" but while I was recording the script, I kept thinking about it more and finding flaws in the design.
@@GohLow Fair enough. I was probably being a dick there. I guess I just thought the basic idea of capturing the king to win was like, a symbol which had been used so many times culturally I figured it was well known even without knowing the rules.
When you said that you didn't know how to play chess, I just stopped the video and backed away. I'm looking for a less biased and more reliable review. I'm not wasting my time here.
The developer said this review was fair. If they think me not knowing how to play chess doesn't make this review unreliable, who are you to tell me otherwise?
What do you think of Checkmate Showdown?
Fair tbh.
We learned a lot from this game and we're aware of what we did right/wrong. Also, FGC never completely shit on us and they've been very helpful and kind throughout the whole process - they always provided quality feedback (sometimes constructive, sometimes not) but overall, they voiced what they liked and didn't like. With that and videos like this, we're taking everything and going back to the drawing board. So thank you for voicing your overall feelings about the game.
That being said, this isn't the end for BadRez Games - we're just getting started.
Let's go! Checkmate showdown was my favorite release of last year and made my friends play it with me a lot. Will your next project be another fighting game-chess hybrid? or will you guys be going in another direction?
This video made a lot of good points but was rather negative, I think mostly cause of the price. It may not be a nation wide e sport, but what Checkmate Showdown is is a really great game to come back to from time to time. Really fun fluid combo system, and the chess is well balanced with the fighting mechanics. There's a reason to play good chess, but really boils down to fighting well.
It wasn't mostly because of the price. Like, not at all.
Good to here. As much as I was critical of the game, it's no easy task trying to combine two complex elements, and I respect that y'all took a real genuine shot at it.
On paper this should have been my game of the year. I really wanted to like it as I play both chess and fighting games. I'm a huge advocate of indie fighting games too so I hope it made irs money back. They seemed to spend a lot of it on advertising, for an indie game.
Unfortunately the fighting component was too watered down for me. I lke other simplified fighters like footsies, divekick, fantasy strike, but this one just didn't feel good to play.
The more disappointing thing to me is that I didnt enjoy the chess aspect either because it doesn't really reward playing good chess. You can make a game losing blunder with a piece, then win the duel and improve your board position as if the OPPONENT made the blunder.
You can't actually checkmate the king because there IS NO concept of check or checkmate in the game. In fact, sometimes a badly placed king is at advantage because there might be a rook or something giving an assist. In real chess it doesn't matter if a piece can recapture a piece after you would lose your king. You would still just lose by checkmate!
A castled position is way worse than it should be because if they sacrifice a piece for a pawn like in a Greek Gift, normally this is only sound if the attacker gets compensation in other ways, like capturing a hanging piece. Here the sacrificial piece can blow up the kings life bar too, or even just win you the game. I bought up to the devs how this really weakens the king as a defensive piece but they didn't seem to get it.
Anyway this doesnt necessarily mean the chess aspect is worse. It's effectively a variant with different rules and tactics. So it's not exactly chess. But it's also not much of a fighter either. So i ultimately gave it a pass after trying the demo. Maybe it will get better with time, who knows.
Thank you for giving the Chess player's perspective on this. Makes me feel like if I had taken the time to learn Chess via Chess.com like the game suggests, I would have come back to the game liking it less because of how the game breaks the rules of it.
@@GohLow I will say that all chess players are not a monolith, Dacidbro really seems to like the game and he's better than me at fighters and perhaps chess too. I just personally don't like how "swingy" the chess aspect is compared to real chess.
In chess evaluation, the "centipawn" tells you how advantaged the board position is. 1 centipawn is 1/100 of a pawn. An "inaccurate" move weakens your position by 50 centipawns or more. A "Mistake" is losing 100 centipawns and a "blunder" loses 300 centipawns, or the value of a minor piece like a bishop or a knight.
If you try to a capture a minor piece with a minor piece in checkmate showdown and lose the duel, you lost an entire piece (worth about 3 whole pawns or 300 centipawns) instead of the opponent. So it's like blundering.. twice!
i have two main criticism of cms, and thats that the game is poorly optimized, and that the game isnt very indepth. i know these arent super apperent criticisms, but between the fact that my computer struggles to run the game period, and the fact that the combat doesnt feel good imo. i also think the fact it doesnt teach you chess is very intresting, it wasnt something i thought about becuase im already very big into chess and fighting games.
In general chess videogames don't do a good job of teaching people how to play chess, I don't understand?
Probably because the only thing about those games is chess, so you'd only buy it if you knew how to play chess. This game was courting two audiences, with there being no guarantee that the people coming from Fighting Games would know how to play chess. Give me so much as a 5-minute tutorial, that's all I ask.
@@GohLow I just wish there was a game that made learning how to properly play chess not feel like homework and it literally doesn't exist.
@@ToseRoyal Yeah, that'd be awesome.
As a concept its fantastic. I think thats what makes it more frustrating. The concept is there but the execution is severely lacking. On top of that, like you said, the solutions are very simple things that shouldve been thought of in the concept stages of development. Forget starfield, this was my gaming letdown of the year
Seriously. The amount of content would be fine for a Free To Play game, but a pay-to-play game should give you a lot more than this did.
Wow, this must be the most brutal review I’ve seen on your channel 😅 but I totally see where you’re coming from on this!! It really seems like a chess game for people who like chess and want a bit of a twist on it - which is fine if it made it clear that was the target audience. I’m friends with a guy who plays a lot of chess, I’d be curious what he thought. But I doubt he would want to spend the $20 to try it out. It’s a bit of a shame the steam sale just ended because I think this game was half off, maybe I could have persuaded him to try it at that lower price.
I kind of have an idea for a twist on this but using backgammon instead of chess 🤔
You'd think that'd be their approach, but they advertised a lot in the fighting game space, only to completely not account for the Fighter-Who-Doesn't-Know-Chess player. It's really odd. I think they coulda gotten away with this if it was Free-To-Play and they sold different table skins and piece skins and the like. I wanna say this is my first negative review since the GBA Mortal Kombat video from like two years ago.
That was a brutal takedown towards the end. I was thinking at the start when you brought up accessibility that chess is pretty unintuitive to me. Shame a unique concept just didn't get enough to it, the first half of the video sounded pretty positive. But even with a thriving online community, I'm not interested in games dependent on online multiplayer to have content.
That's how writing it went. I had my angle of "This game does the fighting game portion interestingly" but while I was recording the script, I kept thinking about it more and finding flaws in the design.
hope you'll have a good day c: have you heard of the game Pocket Bravery? looking forward to it coming out physically in march
Same to you! And no, I haven't played it, but Frumious Gaming did a pretty good video on it recently.
I am amazed that there are people who don't know how you win at chess to this day.
Nobody ever taught me chess
@@GohLow Fair enough. I was probably being a dick there. I guess I just thought the basic idea of capturing the king to win was like, a symbol which had been used so many times culturally I figured it was well known even without knowing the rules.
Siiiick
When you said that you didn't know how to play chess, I just stopped the video and backed away. I'm looking for a less biased and more reliable review. I'm not wasting my time here.
The developer said this review was fair. If they think me not knowing how to play chess doesn't make this review unreliable, who are you to tell me otherwise?