Video Game / Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate

”Bits of white pieces will fly.”

Chess, but you replace your entire army with a royal shotgun.

Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate, released on Steam on May 12, 2022, is a Turn-Based Strategy Roguelike Chess game created by PUNKCAKE Delicieux, a two-person studio based in France. The player takes on the role of the Black King, a tyrant who was so despised that his queen, his knights, and all of his subjects deserted him and flocked to the banner of an upstart White King who promised better wages and jobs. With nothing left but his royal shotgun, his wounded pride, and a prophetic warning from a bishop that his wrath would be his undoing, the Black King sets out alone to reclaim his kingdom, one shell at a time.

Gameplay consists of a combination of Variant Chess and top-down shooting. You only play as a King with no assisting pieces and inability to capture your opponent's pieces, but who is armed with a shotgun to blast away your opposition, with each floor's objective being to check the opposing king, all while moving and reloading so that you don't get checked yourself. After each floor, you can choose one of two card sets that will upgrade your King's capabilities while also upgrading your opponent's pieces.

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Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate contains the following tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: The Black King is such a Bad Boss that all his own pieces deserted him, forcing him to fight each and every battle without any allies.
• 1-Up:
  • Each Black Mist card gives you one more shot at killing the white king, teleporting you to a random closest square that isn't in check whenever you would die. Prior to an update, it could fail if the final boss killed you via Eaten Alive, or if your own grenades blew you up. It can still fail if every unoccupied square is in check, but that usually means you screwed up badly.
  • The Secret Heir gives the White King one. One of the Pawns is randomly chosen the White King's heir, and if that pawn is alive when the White King dies, it becomes a new White King. Fortunately, it's possible to see which Pawn it is by being in a direct orthogonal line from it.
• Achievement Mockery: You get an achievement from getting eaten by the Final Boss White King, and another from getting blown up by your own Kingly Alms grenades.
• Airborne Mook: The Ascension white card turns Bishops into these, allowing them to move/attack past other pieces unblocked. It also makes them unaffected by The Moat.
• Always Accurate Attack:
  • The Wand of Wrath allows the Black King to deal their firepower in damage to a selected target of choice, as long as it's not a King or a Boss. Unlike the shotgun, it can't miss, and it also doesn't use a turn.
  • Certain Black Cards can give the Black King Blade Damage, which allows the King to damage an adjacent enemy for his Blade Damage without fear of missing or hitting other targets and consumes no ammunition in the process.
  • The rats spawned by killed enemies via the Ravenous Rats card will home in on an enemy without fail and always deal 1 damage to them.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: The Genderqueer white card removes 1 Bishop, but causes a Queen to spawn in on Turn 10. It used to be called "Crossdresser" prior to a name change, making the new name ambiguous if the Bishop became transgender or is simply crossdressing.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • The folly shields. They exist primarily to prevent you from accidentally checkmating yourself, however they activate if there is even a hint of danger, even if there’s a 99% chance you’ll take the checking piece out before it can move. They can be disabled in the settings.
  • Pieces knocked back from Rightful Curtsey/Ramesses II and Rooks that used Castle to swap with a King can no longer instantly checkmate you, making the former more appealing and the latter far less dangerous.
• Arbitrary Minimum Range: The Presbyopia Black Card makes both Queens and Bishops unable to attack you if they're right next to you.
• Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: This is the purpose of Folly Shields. Whenever the player makes a move that would put them in check (or not move out of check), the game will warn you while using up one.
• Artificial Stupidity: Zig Zagged. On the surface, it may seem like a stupid decision to promote pawns to non queen pieces. In certain situations however, non queen pieces can be much more deadly than a queen would otherwise be. For example, Theocracy makes it so that bishops become the pieces you need to kill instead of the king, and a pawn promoting into a bishop adds another piece you must kill to win. Bodyguard means that the king is immortal as long as a knight still lives. Castling allows the King to swap places with a rook whenever he would take damage. The Subtle Poison black card makes all Queens have a movement distance of 1 for their first 15 turns, neutering their threat for a while. However, the pawns can still promote into non queen pieces even if they do not have those appropriate abilities yet.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Once you reach the final White King, he reaches his breaking point and becomes massive, occupying 4 spaces and having a huge amount of health. The bishop can undergo a similar transformation if certain conditions are met.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Beating the game by killing the final White King has the Villain Protagonist Black King taking over his forces, and subjecting them to his terrible rule. It's taken even further in the best ending, where instead of having learned nothing and allowing the White pieces to rise up in the future, the Black King bans all of White's holy books and declares himself as their new god, ruling over them forevermore.
• Balance Buff:
  • Taunting Hop got changed from using up your turn into becoming a free action once per turn, making it much more viable as a means of escape or dealing chip damage to soften enemies up.
  • The Knock Back from Rightful Curtsey now prevents affected pieces from attacking you on the same turn, which used to be a source of cheap deaths (especially against Knights). It still does not save you from discovered check from knocking a piece out of another's attack.
• Begin with a Finisher: Welcome Gift gives you a whopping 4 extra firepower, but deactivates for the floor if you reload even once. This encourages you to make your first clip count.
• Bowdlerize: When the game was ported to consoles, the developers had to tone down certain instances of strong profanity to comply with the E10+ rating it was given. Notably, one line in the newly added tutorial had the Black King insult the two knights he encounters by calling them "horse-smoochers" instead of "horse-fuckers" as he originally did.
• But Thou Must!: After Floor 3, both of the possible card options will have the Homecoming white card on it, meaning that you are forced to add the queen piece into the game. The in-game description of the cards even taunts you (see The Dreaded below).
• Cherry Tapping: The Taunting Hop card allows the King to hop on and over an enemy as a free action once per turn, dealing 1 damage to the enemy jumped on. It's very possible to kill enemies with this hilarious and humiliating method, and you even get an achievement named "Humiliation" for killing the White King this way.
• Close-Range Combatant: Blade abilities allow you to attack adjacent enemies with a melee attack that never misses and deals your Blade stat in damage. Depending on the Shotgun you equip, you may start out with some Blade, and there are Black cards that grant more such as Nightbane (+3 Blade) and Bushido (+2 Blade, -1 Firepower, you can execute an adjacent piece as a free action once per turn).
• Choose a Handicap: Every level, you pick between two sets of two cards, with one card that improves your King and another that improves the white pieces. Hilariously enough, the option at the end of Floor 3 will always be Homecoming, introducing the White Queen into the game.
• Cursed with Awesome: Some Black Cards turn White Cards into advantage. For example, Military Academy adds a Knight every 10 turns, which means a potential free turn every 10 turns if you have Courteous Jousting.
• Dark Is Evil: The Black King is a Villain Protagonist whose mistreatment of his subjects caused them to leave him, and his solution to this is murdering the pieces who deserted him for the much more benevolent White King.
• The Determinator: NOTHING short of death will stop the Shotgun King from reclaiming his throne.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Wand of Wings allows the Black King to move three squares forwards, bypassing opposing pieces and it doesn't cost a turn. A possible tactic with enough firepower and the Ritual Dagger is to remove the piece in front of the White King, using the Wand of Wings to hop right in front of them (which doesn't end you since it doesn't use a turn), then blasting him to death at point-blank. If this fails to kill, then the White King or another piece threatening you will kill you.
• Discard and Draw: Some of the upgrades to either side will strengthen them in one aspect of another in exchange of weakening them in others, such as removing one piece in exchange of adding another piece.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: It's normally not possible to move and attack at the same time. However, the Royal Loafers Card allows the Black King to do so by tagging a target and strafe-firing upon moving.
• The Dreaded: The White Queen, if her Homecoming white card descriptions have anything to say. Keep in mind you're forced to pick this up after Floor 3.
  "You can’t escape her..."
  —Card 1
  "…she’s everywhere!"
  —Card 2
• Eaten Alive: If the final White King checkmates the Black King and Black Mist isn't active, he grabs him and swallows him whole. Prior to an update, this even prevented Black Mist from saving you.
• Elite Mook:
  • The queen piece will be added into the board after Floor 3, and she is not only more mobile than other pieces, but she can also take more damage than the other ones.
  • Any piece, even pawns can become elite mooks if you select the appropriate cards. Bishops in particular have plenty of cards that can make them just as if not more threatening than a queen. For example, Ascension allows them to ignore other pieces, The Red Book allows them to move (but not attack) orthogonally and Zealots allows them to move every other turn.
• Epic Fail: With a right combination of White Cards, it's possible for every square to be in check to the point where Black Mist, which saves you from death and places you on a safe square, fails to work. Even if you do get the right combination of cards, you'd have to be trying on purpose to get checkmated this badly (i.e. not killing the Militia Pikemen Pawns).
• Explosive Stupidity: It's very possible for your own Kingly Alms grenades to blow you up if they land adjacent to you.
• Extra Turn: There are a few ways to obtain an extra turn or get abilities that do not cost a turn, all of which are Black Cards:
  • Courteous Jousting allows you to get an extra turn whenever you kill a Knight.
  • Royal Loafers effectively gives you two turns in one by allowing you to tag an enemy, then fire at them while you make a move.
  • Sacred Crown gives you an extra turn after using a Soul.
  • King's Shoulders allows you to pick up an opposing piece without using a turn, but can only be performed once a floor.
  • Bushido allows you to execute an adjacent piece as a free action once per turn.
  • All Wands are free actions that do not end your turn when used.
  • Analysis Paralysis is a White card that gives the enemy six free turns that end once they're over or until you're put in check, whichever comes first. It can be stacked twice to give White's pieces up to 12 free turns.
• Fatal Flaw: The Black King has Pride and Wrath as his flaws. His entire crusade started because his pride caused him to mistreat his subjects, and his solution to this was violence against all who dared to leave him, which the Black Bishop even mentions would be his undoing. True enough, due to the game being a Roguelike, it's much more likely that the Black King will meet his end than succeed in his conquest. And in most cases where he does succeed, his pride means he never learns his lesson and stays the same Bad Boss, allowing the White Pieces to turn against him in the future.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Knights have 3 HP, the same amount as Pawns. However, not only can they move more squares at a time than pawns and jump over obstacles, they also have the fastest movement rate of all pieces, making a move every two turns. Because of this, Knights often hop into the front lines to harass you even before the pawns come along, but are fortunately easily blasted away unless they have Kite Shield.
  • The Black King is normally a Mighty Glacier, moving one square at a time but hitting hard. However, it's possible to turn him into a fragile but fast Glass Cannon by spending souls to move like other pieces, carrying Knight Souls while having Unfaithful Steed (+1 movement as long as an enemy Knight lives), or by using the Wand of Wings to move up to three spaces, which doesn't use up a turn and bypasses pieces. He still takes one hit to go down without Black Mist, so be careful.
• Gathering Steam: The Egotic Maelstrom card gives you +1 Firepower every 10 turns.
• Geo Effects: The Moat is a card that converts the fourth rank into Moat tiles. Any piece (including the Black King) that isn't a Knight or an Ascension Bishop cannot cross it in one move, forcing them to move onto the moat first before being able to attack the other side of the map from there. The Deep Waters card takes things even further by preventing any non-Knight piece on the Moat from attacking you until they get off.
• Glass Cannon: The Black King is a One-Man Army whose shotgun gives him some absurd firepower to take out enemy pieces, but he goes down if placed in checkmate, unless Black Mist is active.
• A God Am I: In the secret ending where the Black King kills the Black Bishop and destroys his holy book, he starts to view himself as being above God and orders his subjects to call him Shotgun God.
• Goomba Stomp: The Taunting Hop black card allows the Black King to hop on an enemy to an empty square on the other side as a free action once per turn, dealing 1 damage to that enemy. It can be used as a method of escape or a means to finish off enemies.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The King's Shoulders card allows the Black King to grab a nearby enemy once per floor and throw them on their next attack. If this hits another enemy, it deals 3 damage to both the thrown piece and the piece it collides with.
• Guide Dang It!: In order to get fight the True Final Boss and obtain the secret endings, you need White to have both the Theocracy and The Red Book cards, and a single White bishop alive when you defeat the final White King. The only hints one gets is the Black Bishop holding a red book in the opening cutscene, and a White Bishop holding the same book in the standard ending. Getting the best ending also requires that you have at least 1 remaining shell loaded in your shotgun when the Black Bishop is felled.
  • Also related to the secret ending, ever wondered why Theocracy just seems to never show up? Not only does your board need at least 2 white bishops for it to spawn, Ritual Dagger and Throne Room prevents Theocracy from showing up, despite the fact there are other cards that change the King's HP that doesn't do this.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: Getting captured by the Black Bishop causes him to turn the Black King into a White King, which then hops around the board before the game cuts to the Try Again screen.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Black King's pieces, who desert him in the beginning to become white pieces and ever after make their moves against him.
• Here We Go Again!: The game always begins with the Black King being such a Bad Boss that all his pieces defect to the White King. When the Black King beats the White King and reasserts dominance over his pieces... he quickly demonstrates that he has learned nothing, and keeps being such a tyrant that his pieces rebel again, setting the stage for a new game.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The Kingly Alms card lets you throw grenades at range, but the farther they're thrown, their landing place becomes more unpredictable. This does indeed mean with a bit of "luck", they can bounce close enough to you to kill you. Prior to an update, getting killed by this even prevented Black Mist from saving you. You can even get an achievement from dying like this, and another if you die like this while taking out the final White King with the same grenade.
  • Similarly, the Rightful Curtsey black card gives you a 50% chance to knock back pieces in the direction of the shot you took... but this can easily lead to an immediate discovered checkmate or push another piece into checkmate, ending your run. The latter fortunately cannot happen after a Balance Buff.
  • Pawns in high numbers can easily swarm over you... but they also just as easily block other more powerful white pieces from moving right away, giving you plenty of time to focus down the white king or bodies to hide behind.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: The Bushido black card allows the Black King to execute^note Target's health has to be equal or lower to your Blade stat an adjacent piece as a free action once per turn, helped further by also giving +2 Blade stat.
• Instant-Win Condition: Killing the opposing King (or Bishops if Theocracy is active) without the King having a surviving heir pawn will be an instant victory, even if the Black King is in check. This is removed if you choose the Guillotine card, which removes the King, forcing you to kill all the pieces to proceed.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Both ways. At the end of a round, the player picks one of two choices that give a card to Black and White:
  • The white pieces initially start off just like how they would function in regular Chess. As you progress through the floors though, you choose how they become increasingly more dangerous. For example, Bishops can gain the ability to fly over other pieces, or pawns can attack 2 squares in front as well as diagonally forward.
  • The Black King himself becomes this to the White forces every round, as the player picks a card of their choosing that, while giving White an advantage as mentioned above, also gives the Black King an advantage such as dealing more damage, the capability to cast spells, or nerfing the enemy forces.
• Injured Vulnerability: The Caltrops card makes any piece that has been injured (not at full health) lose 2 speed, meaning that they take 2 more turns before moving.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The Iron Maiden white card turns all queens into one, in exchange for moving less often. It's one of the most dangerous advantages White can obtain. There's only one way to kill her other than ending the level, and it's via using King's Shoulders to pick her up and throw her off the board.
• Kaizo Trap: Subverted. If an enemy piece can attack you on the same turn you kill the opposing king (or if killing the king causes a discovered attack), they will attempt to do so but stop short before dying like the rest of the Keystone Army.
• Karmic Transformation: If the Black King gets checkmated by the Black Bishop, the Bishop will use his Red Book to transform him into a new White King.
• Keystone Army: Killing the opposing king is all what matters each floor, as the rest of the pieces will be smitten by lightning once he goes down...Unless you choose the white Guillotine Card, which removes him and forces you kill all of them.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Bodyguard white card causes the White King's health to stop at 1 upon taking damage, as long as a Knight is alive.
• Last Ditch Move: Attempted, but defied. If a piece can move in the same turn as you kill the opposing king, they will make the move even with their king dead but will stop short instead of killing you, thus avoiding a Kaizo Trap.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Getting the Black Bishop boss fight and most of the Steam achievements is completely up to whether the game feels like giving you the cards you need, not to mention you have to actually win that run.
  • Unholy Call places 3 Pentagrams on the board. Landing on one gives you a free turn, and triggering all three will give you +2 firepower for the floor and reset all 3. The catch is that the placement of the pentagrams is somewhat random, meaning that it all comes down to luck if you want to capture all 3.
  • Similar to Unholy Call, Undercover Mission places a waypoint that, when landed on will allow the Black King to sabotage White's pieces in a debilitating way. The waypoint is also randomly placed on the board, often on the upper half.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: One of the choices for reaching the waypoint spawned by Undercover Mission is "Sabotage the White Army". This allows the Black King to select and deactivate one of White's cards for the floor, making them lose their effect while retroactively removing pieces that those cards spawned (such as removing a Queen if Homecoming was selected).
• The Many Deaths of You: Besides the standard "captured/crushed by a White Piece", there are a few other ways to die:
  • If your own Holy Alms grenade lands next to you, you get blown up by its explosion.
  • Pawns with the Pikemen card upgrade will extend their spear to impale you if you're within a 2 square range of their front. If the Pawns have Militia, which allows them to move and strike with their pike in all four cardinal directions, their spear also aims in that direction.
  • If the final boss King captures you and you lack Black Mist to escape, he grabs you and you are Eaten Alive.
  • Should the Black King be captured by the Black Bishop, the Bishop uses the power of the Red Book to turn the Black King into a new White King, who then hops around the board a bit before the game cuts to the Try Again? screen — with no "Game Over" text appearing.
• Mighty Glacier: The Black King is a slow piece that only really outclasses the Pawn in movement opportunity. He makes up for his poor speed and fragility by bringing along a freakin' shotgun to just blast his enemies away from afar, and can even circumvent his poor speed by collecting and spending the souls of defeated pieces to move just like them, using the Wand of Wings (which also doesn't use his turn and bypasses pieces), or with Unfaithful Steed and a Knight on the board.
• Mind Control: The Wand of Hypnosis allows you to control a White piece when used, as a free action once per floor.
• Minmaxer's Delight:
  • Black Mist is a Black Card that gives you an extra life per floor, and it protects you from all kills unless every single square on the board is in check.
  • Any Black Card that increases Firepower if the player doesn't already have one. By increasing your Firepower from 4 to 5, you gain the ability to one-shot Queens and Rooks at point-blank.
  • Ruins is a White card that adds 2 Pawns and a Rook onto the board, but it makes all Rooks have 2 less health. This drops them from a beefy 5 HP to a fragile 3 HP, allowing you to kill them much more quickly and easily. It's generally considered an upside that outweighs the downside of an extra Rook and two Pawns.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Black King's entire army and Queen deserted him because of his bad treatment of them, and after learning that the White King promised them better wages and jobs.
• The Mistress: One of White's possible cards is King's Mistress, which puts a second Queen on the board, but reduces the movement range of all Queens to a maximum of 3 (which is still a great amount).
• Multiple Endings: All three of them have the Black King overtake the White King's forces and subject them to his terrible rule. However, there are differences depending on how you beat the Black Bishop (or not):
  • In the standard ending, with the Black King undefeated and having learned nothing, it wouldn't be too long before a new White King rises up and the whole story starts again.
  • If you defeat the Black Bishop, but without any reserve shells loaded, his book will float away. It then cuts to the standard ending, except a white pawn instead of a white bishop is reading the red book.
  • If you defeat the Black Bishop and have an extra shotgun shell loaded in reserve, the bishop's red book will attempt to fly away, but get shot to pieces by the Black King. Afterwards, the Black King takes over White's troops and also declares a new decree to destroy all the holy books — for there is only one God in the Black King.
• Mutual Kill: The Suicide Pact Achievement is obtained by blowing yourself up with the final White King or the Black Bishop via a grenade.
• Nerf:
  • Kingly Alms grenades now draw from a separate ammunition pool and only deal 2 instead of 3 damage, preventing Grenade Spam from ending the enemy forces early on.
  • Unfaithful Steed now requires a surviving enemy Knight instead of the Black King having Knight Souls, making Knight Souls no longer a way to get fast.
  • Pikemen now prevents Pawns from attacking diagonally, making it easier to sidestep them. It also means Militia Pikemen pawns are no longer an "Instant Death" Radius.
  • Castle no longer allows Rooks to instantly checkmate you upon a swap, making it much more tolerable, if still annoying.
• Non-Standard Character Design: The White Queen has a very human-like face complete with long hair◊ on the Homecoming card, as compared to every other piece in the game which look like chess pieces. The "She Is Everywhere" achievement◊ also gives her the same very humanoid look.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If the Black Bishop checkmates you, he uses the Red Book to transform the Black King into a White King, which then hops around the board a bit before the game cuts to the "Try Again" screen. Notably, unlike every other form of defeat, this lacks the usual "Game Over" text, likely because the Black King did not actually die.
• One-Hit Kill: The King's Shoulders card allows you to pick up and throw enemy pieces other than Kings. It doesn't stop you from throwing them off the board, killing them regardless of health. This is the only way to kill an Iron Maiden Queen, and you even get an achievement for doing so.
• One Hitpoint Wonder: You are instantly defeated if you put into checkmate, discovered check, or manage to bounce a grenade adjacent to yourself. The Black Mist card can save you, but will be used up for the round.
• One-Man Army: Black King doesn't need an army of his own to take over White King's castle and land. All he needs is a shotgun, and his murderous rage.
• Platform-Activated Ability:
  • Unholy Call places 3 pentagrams on the board in random spaces. Stepping on one of these gives you an extra turn and deactivates the platform, activating all 3 resets them and gives a +2 boost to your firepower that lasts for the floor.
  • Undercover Mission places a waypoint on the upper side of the board that when landed on, will allow the Black King to sabotage White's pieces in a debilitating way. This effect can be selected by the player, ranging from deactivating a White card, lowering the max HP of all of White's units by 1, getting free ammo and refills, or damaging the White King.
• Poison Mushroom: The Rightful Curtsey card is one of the most unreliable and often detrimental cards that Black can obtain. It gives Black a 50% chance to Knock Back any enemies hit, which already makes it a Luck-Based Mission, but the biggest drawback is that it can move pieces out of another piece's way and result in a discovered checkmate, or move pieces into checkmate, both of which will end your game unless Black Mist is active. Strangely enough, having two of these makes it less unreliable since the knockback becomes a guarantee, allowing the player to plan their moves around it. The card got a Balance Buff that made pieces unable to attack you on the turn they're knocked back, but the discovered checkmate issue still exists.
• Practical Taunt: The Taunting Hop black card lets you jump over any piece, while dealing 1 damage to that piece. It counts as a free action but can only be used once per turn.
• Precision F-Strike: The White King has a few choice words to call the Black King once the Black King clears 11 floors:
  "So many years worth of new subjects... So much work to make them feel welcome and safe... All reduced to glass shards by one royal fucker with a shotgun."
• Rapid Aging: The Golden Aging card causes this with the enemy King and Queen. It makes both have 1 less health, and every 10 turns their speed decreases by one, making them move less and less often. It also is a prerequisite for Presbyopia.
• Ring Out: The only way to kill a Queen with the Iron Maiden white card (which makes Queens invulnerable to damage) is to use the King's Shoulders card to grab her, then throw her out of the level.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The whole plot of the game, as the Black King tears through the white king's lands in order to reclaim his rule.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Downplayed with the Black King himself, as it's more an act of desperation and rage considering he's the only one left of his empire, but Played Straight with the white side, where every piece, including the king willing to throw down to protect their home. And much like in standard chess, once the White Queen comes in round 3, she becomes one of the dangerous pieces on the board (barring certain upgrades to non-queen pieces).
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: The "Sawed-Off Justice" black card increases your firepower by 2, decreases your range by 1, and makes your shotgun give a backwards Recoil Boost whenever you fire.
• Short-Range Shotgun: While you can aim your shotgun to increase its range, it will increase its firing arc so that less pellets will have a chance of hitting one target, at best hitting multiple targets at once. You can increase the range and decrease the firing arc though, with the Engraved Scope upgrade allowing you to turn the shotgun into essentially a sniper rifle temporarily. Alternatively, with enough raw firepower, even a wide shotgun becomes useful at most ranges, tearing large chunks of health out of entire swathes of enemies.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The game's entire premise is Chess, but your king has a shotgun you use to blast through your opponent's pieces.
• Single-Use Shield: The "Kite Shield" White Card gives all Knights a shield that absorbs all damage on the first time they're hit, then disappears.
• Soul Power: Killing pieces above pawns allows you to turn them into soul cards which can be used to temporarily turn yourself into the said piece, giving you much greater movement than normal.
• Spread Shot: Being a shotgun, your weapon naturally has a random bullet arc spread, and certain cards can increase or decrease it. Having a large spread is an outright downside since the bullets spread out randomly, sometimes missing entirely unless it's at point-blank range.
• Staff of Authority: There are handful of black cards that gives you different staves, giving you different active abilities like smiting one random piece, maxing out your ammo or letting you move like a queen when used. Notably, using a staff will never use up your current turn.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Grenades are an unlockable upgrade, which allows you to throw a grenade which will explode in a random space within a selectable area, at the cost of two shells.
• Succubi and Incubi: A possible White card is called Succubus and it depicts a White Queen with demonic wings. In-game, its effect adds another Queen to the board, but gives you a free Soul slot implying that White's King sold their soul to get her as a mistress.
• Swap Teleportation: The Castle card makes the King swap places with a surviving Rook whenever he would take damage, causing the Rook to take damage in his stead. It used to allow Rooks to instant-checkmate you if you were orthogonally lined up with the King and the Rook survives taking the shot (quite likely, as they have 5 health without modifiers), but this no longer happens.
• Theme Naming: The different shotguns you can use are named after various rulers: Solomon, Victoria, Makeda, Ramesses II, and Richard III.
• The Theocracy: One of the white cards is called this, which removes the king piece but adds another bishop piece into the board, with the win condition turning into killing all of the bishops.
• A Thicket of Spears: The Pikemen white card gives all Pawns a spear that allows them to attack 2 squares forward, nullifying their greatest weakness in the inability to attack straight downwards and replacing it with a strength. It gets even deadlier if combined with Militia, which allows Pawns to move in all cardinal directions and attack in all diagonals, because Pikemen will also allow them to attack 2 squares in every cardinal direction! It did get nerfed later on, where it now prevents Pawns from attacking diagonally.
• Throw the Mook at Them: The King's Shoulders card allows you to grab a nearby non-King piece once per floor and throw them on your next shot, dealing 3 damage to it as well as the target it hits.
• True Final Boss: If you defeat the White King when you have both the Red Book and Theocracy cards with no other piece besides a single bishop alive, the bishop will turn into the Black Bishop to bring an end to Black King's rampage.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Red Book, an upgrade that grants bishops the ability to move like queens. Getting it along with Theocracy is required to fight the final boss bishop.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Both the Black and White Kings look like chess pieces whose faces would be Gonk by human standards, while the White Queen (formerly the Black Queen) is depicted in cards and achievements as a beautiful human woman.
• Variant Chess: You play as the Black King, have no other pieces, and can't capture normally... but the Black King has a shotgun which they can use to aim and shoot at the White pieces to damage and kill them, while also being able to move and shoot each round. Killing White's king ends the round, while it's Game Over if the Black King is captured. White starts out with few pieces, but every round they gain more. At the end of a successful round, the player selects a card that gives an advantage to the Black King and an advantage to White's pieces, changing up the gameplay strategy — such as one that gives the Black King to respawn once if checkmated, but also gives White's Pawns the ability to attack 2 squares forward.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The Merciful Ruler Achievement is obtained by beating a floor without killing any Pawns, while A Velvet Glove is obtained by beating a floor without killing any non-leader pieces.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: The King is capable of capturing the souls of non-pawn pieces he kills, and can spend them to move like how that piece would. The White Card Sanctity prevents the King from doing this to Bishops, however.
• Villain Protagonist: The Black King is depicted as being a temperamental tyrant while the White King is depicted as being The Good King, yet the game is about the Black King trying to reclaim his throne by blasting all those who stand on his way.
• Violation of Common Sense: The player's shields are there to prevent you from committing into a move that would lead you getting checked by a different piece than you were expecting. Not only can you just click through your shields to do the move you were intending, but it is recommended to do so if your move results in you eliminating the problem in the first place.
• Visual Pun: If the final boss White King checkmates the Black King, he grabs and eats him whole. "Eating" is a slang for capturing in Chess.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: In relative order of being your own fault to the game's fault:
  • Dying even with Black Mist active because every square is put in check, usually by skipping/wasting turns on purpose.
  • Killing a piece that was blocking another piece that would've put you in check, causing a discovered checkmate.
  • Righteous Curtsy rolls a 50/50 and pushes a piece that was blocking another piece, causing a discovered checkmate.
  • The grenade you threw with Kingly Alms ends up bouncing and landing right next to you.
  • Firing at a piece right next to you and some bullets miss because your spread is too high, letting the piece kill you. Folly Shield will not protect you when firing at near point-blank range with enough Firepower.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The King is capable of taking the souls of non-pawn pieces whenever he kills them, which he can spend to move like that piece. However, the Sanctity White Card makes Bishop's souls un-reapable.
• Zerg Rush: Pawns are obviously the weakest enemy piece you have to deal with at first, but upgrades involving them tend to add more and more of them into the field to the point that they might try to swarm you. Add in upgrades that increase their mobility or even their range, and they will turn into something way more than mere fodder.

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