Nice Games Jam: "Ƈɧɇᵴʂ 2⁴ (Live at 2D Con 2021)"

Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

It's your nice hosts second live episode for 2D Con, Minnesota's biggest video game event.

Stephen asks the audience to boo at him, Ellen knows the lingo, and Mark isn't making sense.

Prompt

"Chess 2" "Four-dimensional" "Welcome to Night Vale"

Game type

Tabletop game

Player count

2

Materials

4x4 board.

3 Pawn pieces per player.

1 "Mayor" (King) pieces per player.

An unspecified number of Glow Cloud (Queen), Librarian (Bishop), and Reverse Pawn pieces.

Setup

• Place or draw a 4x4 chess-style board.
• Arrange three Pawn pieces and one Mayor piece along the home row of each player, arranged left-to-right (from each player's point of view) in this pattern: Pawn-Pawn-Mayor-Pawn

Rules

The goal is to capture the opposing player's Mayor. Mayors move like Kings in Chess. Play proceeds exactly like Chess, with the following exceptions/additions:

• A player may, instead of making a move, "undo" their most recent move, as long as the space where their most recently moved piece previously was remains open. If the player's most recently moved piece was just captured on their opponent's turn, that piece still returns to it's previous position.
• When a Pawn reaches the opponent player's home row, that piece is promoted to one of three positions, randomly using a 6-sided die:
  • Reverse Pawn (1-3): Same as a Pawn, but moving in the other direction. When a Reverse Pawn returns to the player's home row, they are not promoted but become a standard Pawn again.
  • Librarian (4-5): Equivalent to a Bishop in Chess.
  • Glow Cloud (6): Equivalent to a Queen in Chess.