Play cards to move your hero like a chess piece and capture monsters.
Pawnbarian, released on Steam on Sep 24, 2021, is a Turn-Based Strategy Roguelike Chess game created by j4nw, a mostly-solo, independent game developer based in Poland.
The player takes on the role of any one of six heroes, including the titular hero, to clear out 5-by-5 chessboard dungeons of various kinds of monsters by playing chess piece cards to kill said monsters by landing on their squares.
Pawnbarian contains the following tropes:
- Area of Effect: Playing a card with Cardinal and/or Diagonal Splash enables the player to attack the enemies cardinally and/or diagonally adjacent to the square you land on with said card; this can be useful not only for killing groups of enemies at once, but for oneshotting nimble enemies (i.e. every type of goblin) that would have dodged the attack in question without splash, as well as killing enemies that the attack would not be able to reach otherwise. However, in the Foul Shrine, it can also risk triggering multiple Void Grasps if not used carefully, potentially heavily damaging or even killing the player.
- Boring, but Practical: Shields are not as flashy as Cantrips or Splash, but are highly applicable in all three dungeons to enable your hero to tank damage that would otherwise drain their Hearts.
- Cyber Cyclops: Several types of Golems - specifically the Knight, Guard, Demon, and King Golems - have only one glowing red eye instead of the two eyes that each other enemy type has.
- Extra Turn / Draw Extra Cards: Playing a card with a Cantrip grants you an extra move (making it effectively free to use) and draws one more card from the deck. However, triggering a Cantrip around Goblin Zappers or any kind of Golems will also trigger their Spark traits, which could hurt you in the short run (if you're in range of any Spark Surges or you finish your turn with Capybear Golems Spark Walking into striking range) and/or the long run (if Spewer Golems are present to cover their adjacent squares with Blight).
- Kill Streak: The Shogun has the Dragon Drop ability, which charges up for every enemy killed by any non-Dragon Drop damage source and can be activated at any time to trigger increasingly powerful, stackable effects at the cost of a move. In order of charges required, the available effects are:
- 0+: Gain a Shield and promote a card.
- 1+: Trigger Diagonal Splash.
- 2+: Trigger Cardinal Splash.
- 3+: Trigger a Cantrip, and draw another card if you have less than 3 in hand.
- 4+: Gain one more Shield for each additional charge over 3.
- Pain & Gain: Instead of buying Cantrips from the upgrade shop, the Capyzerker has the Rage ability which charges up for every heart lost and then enables him to trigger one Cantrip per charge consumed.
