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With this variant you can win without checkmating: just checking with leaving only 1 forced move is enough to win the game.

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As long as putting the king in check isn't optimal…

Right, so your check should be in a context where another move was mate in 1

Not necessarily. The check with forced answer could be a terrible move in normal chess. E.g. a check with the queen where the queen can simply be taken by the king.

Which it quite often is. Like the example they show with the early-game check with the queen, putting the king in check by placing a totally undefended piece within one square of the king is (usually) a suboptimal move, and the king taking that piece will (often) be the most optimal way of getting out of check.

In this variant the attacking piece will effectively be protected by how bad its move was. Creates some interesting incentives - the only way to checkmate is a move that is normally not optimal and has only one way out of check.

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