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Show HN: I made a little puzzle game about a rogue chess knight

knightride.rakhim.org

155 pointsfreetonik57 comments

This could use a bit more explanation. For instance:

How many points and how many bonus moves do you get for a capture? Does it depend on what you capture? (It looks like it's one bonus move whatever you capture, but more points for more valuable pieces; 1 for a pawn, 3 for a bishop, so I'll guess it's 5 for a rook and 9 for a queen.)

Does "Beware of attackers!" mean (1) you aren't allowed to move the knight to a square that's attached, (2) you will get some points deducted when you do, or (3) nothing, it's just flavour-text? (It looks like it's #2, a loss of one point each time you move to a square that's attacked.)

The instructions don't mention the "clean board" bonus; I think they should.

I'd write it something like this:

Complete each level by reaching the target within the given number of moves.

Each piece you capture gives you one more move, and points according to the value of the piece.

You lose one point any time you move to a square that's attacked.

Your score for the level is the number of moves you had spare at the end, times the number of points you earned. Double if you captured all the pieces!

(... Except that it looks as if there's some further "streak" mechanic, which I haven't tried to figure out the details of.)

If that's too long, put it behind a clicky-button, and just say "Get your knight to the target square. Earn points for getting there quickly without being attacked, and capturing pieces on the way." plus a button labelled something like "Full rules".

Maybe make the notification when you capture a piece say something like "+3 points / +1 move"?

If the levels get fairly crowded then it might be expensive to get the computer to find the best possible score, but it shouldn't be hard to make it find a pretty good score. You could present that, either at the start or after the user finishes the level, as a target, and congratulate them when they meet or even beat it.

Thanks a lot! I've used your latter suggestion and added a "full rules" section. And will work on better notifications later.

a few more ideas:

* jumping onto a field under attack sends the knight to a random new location instead of deducting points

* configurable board size with the number of black pieces adjusted. the classic 8x8 board with 16 black pieces could be one preconfigured choice

* multiple white knights.

* a random black piece moves after each jump of the white knight

Way back when Flash was a thing, one of the teachers at my kiddo's school started a chess club. They never played a full game of chess, but other games that taught the kids how to move the pieces and not burden them with the strategy of a full game. I decided to try to turn a few of those into Flash based games. It was fun making each of the pieces with the rules limiting their movement which became a game on its own just to show where pieces could go or not. Then adding more pieces to start playing the games. I never worked it up to the point of having player vs computer though. Glad to see other people also thinking chess based games could be made without needing a vs computer as well.

I think this game would be perfect for a young kids chess club. Nice job!

This was fun. I played for a few minutes and like how there seem to be multiple ways to play the game-

1. just get through the level and not worry about losing points

2. get through the level without losing any points but not worrying about clearing all the pieces

3. absolute perfection where you clear all the pieces without losing any points

This flexibility makes it good for serious players but also kids/casual players. Great job!

there is more. the number of moves left at the end is a multiplier for your points, so try to get through the level with a minimum number of moves while maximizing points by capturing high value pieces and also find streaks where you capture multiple pieces in a row.

i love looking at a board and try to figure out the best order of moves to get the most points.

not that i am very good at it, but it's fun and addictive.

Unfortunately sometimes it's impossible not to lose any points because all of the initial squares you can move to are under attack.

You're right, I guess I should reword it to "not lose any unnecessary points." I remember a level like that with a queen in just the right spot that any legal move was attacked, but moving left/right changed your options for later moves.

You’re standing in notable footsteps, one of Alexei Pajitnov’s follow-ups to Tetris was a similar game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Move

Whoa, didn't know this. Gonna try to find a copy of that game.

there's a PC release, probably easier to acquire https://www.ebay.com/p/170294163

I just played for a few minutes and loved it. Chess variants can sometimes take too long to understand the rules so this was great (excellent ux). I think I'd have liked it a bit more if you get captured (lose and restart) when you move on a square that's being attacked (rather than losing a point).

I also enjoyed how it got a bit harder as the levels went on. And also how a stray pawn/piece might act as a hint (i.e. to capture on that square) - a bit like how side scrolling and adventure games might leave a trail of rings/bananas/collectables to guide the player along a desired path where it otherwise may not be obvious.

Wrote a blog post about making the game: https://rakhim.exotext.com/knight-ride-a-game-about-rogue-ch...

Playing on my phone. Got to just under 12,000 before I got a txt and when I went back to the game it had restarted.

Two things that would be nice. Show the optimal score possible for any level, with a single puzzle mode (maybe puzzle of the day) to replay to try and achieve the best score on a single level.

A more significant penalty for moving into unsafe squares. Perhaps losing moves rather than points. An increasing penalty for second and third hit might mitigate the just blunder your way through approach.

I felt like I was in no danger of losing, but if it had a strongger penalty for being hit I think I would hit a limit in a reasonable amount of time.

>I went back to the game it had restarted

Oh no! Your browser probably decided to clean up the RAM or something. I'm not sure if there's a way for the page to "ask" the platform not to clean it, perhaps I could simulate user input. Will research this later.

Puzzle of the day and increasing penalty are great suggestion, thanks!

Storing the state between levels (just score and level number?) in local storage would do the trick. Erase the state at game over. If the page launches with a state in local storage you know a game didn't finish and can resume from the start of the most recent level

Ah. I was thinking how to actually save all previous levels, but that is not needed, just the level number is needed, you're right.

4872 first game. I got all the pieces on every level except the first because I didn't realize you could. Pretty fun and I don't even play chess. Are the levels designed by hand or generated?

They must be generated. Hand designed levels probably wouldn't have things like pawns on the first rank, or four opposing rooks, or situations where the first move unavoidably loses points.

I had a similar thought, randomly generated in 'strength'/points and positions. Pawns on first row are impossible, and last row turn to Queens (or whatever).

There must be a 'relative position' though in the mix of the algorithm, because on some levels the pieces are scattered in the four corners and some others they are on 'perfect-knight-stepping-sequence' so I could take 5-6 pieces in 5-6 moves and then exit.

4872 is really good, u should play chess

Levels are generated randomly. The number of black pieces grows until level 10, then randomly fluctuates.

I have no clue what I'm supposed to do, am I stupid?

Only white moves. Eat black. Go to green dot.

welcome to life. stay calm & use only as much energy for work as necesary, use what's left for fun.

whenever given, read instructions carefully.

capture as many capturables as possible. get to the light at the end last.

PS: it's a knight and can only move like that one hockey club shaped Tetris block

Thank you for your valuable life advice! I figured it out

Is there a help screen with the rules or am I missing how to trigger it?

Just click on the square where you want the knight to move. Has to be a legal move from the current position. Took me a bit as well

Great game, I enjoyed it! Reminds me of echo chess, using the chess pieces for movement means it's really easy to pick up.

I noticed a potential bug (Firefox on Android) - I can pick up extra points by capturing, capturing again, then quickly moving back to the first capture square. I get the points as if it was another capture, even though there is no piece there anymore.

Edit: actually, I can quickly move back and forth for infinite points (and combo)

Huh, interesting. I guess it's because I remove pieces from the board with some timeout. Will fix.

Wonderfully fun game, but I really wish there was a way to save progress instead of starting over again and again.

Well, it's a rogue-like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But seriously, yeah, I'll try to work on that.

maybe a way to skip ahead to the harder levels? it's not that I mind the randomness at all, it's just i'd like to start at something tougher than "1 pawn".

Love the game a lot!

Very nice. I think it would be more fun/challenging if you were unable to move to a position where an opponent piece can take your knight. Also some explanation would be nice, at first I thought I had to avoid other pieces and reach the end in the least amount of moves.

that would be interesting. although i had boards were all possible starting moves were like that. can happen when the knight starts at the edge or in a corner where less moves are possible. it would require to test each board for that situation and discard it and generate a new one.

I picked up chess a few weeks ago after having a lift time of never getting around to learning it. This is great fun and I'm getting to use my newly found skill set of knowing horses move in L shapes.

EDIT: Just scraped through level 9 with zero moves left. Felt tense.

Welcome to the journey!

If you haven't seen it yet, lichess.org has a bunch of fun content

https://lichess.org/practice

https://lichess.org/training (it's labeled "Puzzles" in the UI; there's a difficulty picker hidden in the bottom left of the page)

They have mobile apps, too, although regrettably not all content is available on the app for some horrible reason

I kept getting confused why I'm not getting any points. You really should give the other units the other color (black), o thought they were there too effectively block the spaces, not to be able to capture them for points.

I don't know how to move a piece, does not work neither on firefox nor chromium.

I was just able to play it on FF and the answer is to click on the target square (no drag-drop, and there's no indicators)

This game is great. I played it for quite a few minutes. It reminds a lot of one the games that the inventor of Tetris designed for the Famicom. I can't remember the name of it at the moment.

Thank you! Someone else in the comments also found it similar, and linked to the game you're remembering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Move

That's the one I was thinking of, thanks.

It's a cool game! A couple potential improvements:

1) Provide a "level selector" or way to replay already-played levels 2) Provide a way to restart current level 3) Explain the scoring more fully

Thanks!

1) Gotta think how to do this, since the levels are randomly generated. Perhaps go with the custom seed like they do in some games...

2) Great suggestion, gonna do it soon.

3) Added "full rules" section to the intro screen.

really cool stuff. I think you should have a bigger penalty for when the knight moves to a spot that can be taken by another piece.

the penalty could be relative to the value of the piece

I made it like that in the beginning (and wrote about it and other decisions in a blog post[1]), but felt it was too punishing. Maybe I could punish with 1/2 of the piece value.

[1]. https://rakhim.exotext.com/knight-ride-a-game-about-rogue-ch...

or a third even. 3 point penalty for the queen.

This is great, but I thought the jump from level 2 to level 3 was a little steep.

This is pretty fun, but once I saw how to look at the puzzle got fairly easy.

Took me a sec to figure it out but very fun. Played 23 levels or so.

I can't scroll on Firefox mobile, moves and anything below are not visible. I can't tell if I have limited moves (if so, would prefer an option to get unlimited) or if it's just counting my moves.

I wish I could kill the sound.

Otherwise, everything seems to work.

Nice job, it's fun. Thank you :-)

Fun, nice job

this is cool. reminds me of Hoplite for no reason at all.

thanks, this is fun!

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