A lot of indie developers of turn-based, tactical RPGs were strutting their stuff on Twitter yesterday. So wait a second — Pawnbarian is a card based tactical strategy puzzle RPG? And the hero moves like chess pieces? That you can upgrade? And there’s a demo?
Me? I’d already be downloading the demo. And did. But for those of you who need a little more convincing…
In the demo, you are Pawnbarian, a warrior from the northern Chesslands come to die in glorious battle. The full game has four different character classes with different abilities. Pawnbarian’s special ability revolves around pawn promotion — pieces are promoted when their move starts in the top rank, a pawn moves into it, or there are three pawns in the hand.
Though the playing board resembles a chess board, at its heart, it is a deck-building strategy game. Your initial deck contains mostly vanilla chess pieces. Every time you clear a level in the normal game, you get to visit a shop and spend the gold accumulated. Each level starts off with a certain amount of gold in the pot; this decreases each turn. You do get gold for killing critters, though.
Some would say the shop is where the real game lives. You live and die by your deck. The lightning bolts let you add another card to your hand when that card is played. The shield lets you shrug off a point of damage. A + or x attacks pieces orthogonally or diagonally after you move. Since you only start off with two moves each turn, its to your advantage to try and get more turns and mill the deck for better pieces, with shields. And you can increase your max health in the store, too.
It’s said that the goal of games is to force the player to make interesting decisions. The shop is where that happens, in Pawnbarian.
The battle levels are where your shop decisions play out. Each square has a threat marker; if you end the turn on a space with a marker, you’ll take 1-4 points of damage. Hovering over your Pawnbarian shows which monsters are contributing the damage to the square you are on; hovering over a monster shows which squares they threaten.
Each monster moves by its own rules, and often can only be attacked when certain conditions are met, such as when you are adjacent to it, or not, or there are no other pieces remaining, and so on. Some leave behind blighted squares as they move. Some leave behind weaker mobs to fight on after they die. Some have shields that must be removed before they can take damage.
At least in the demo, every enemy only could take one point of damage — I don’t know if that holds true for the full game.
That’s the game. I have played through the demo dungeon, the seven levels of the Goblin Cave, about a dozen times now. The devs, “j4nw“, are probably wondering why I haven’t bought the game yet… and I plan to. But I have a huge backlog of games to get through, and two games coming soon that I’ve committed to doing a full playthrough.
Store Strategy
I’ve tried a few strategies in the store. Always buy the most expensive upgrade. Always buy health. Always buy as many upgrades as possible. You won’t want to do any of these things to excess. My usual strategy is to buy the most expensive thing as it’s usually two buffs to a piece. If I have gold left over, I buy health. This seems to work pretty well. You want as much card draw as possible, and then shields, and then extra attacks. The extra attacks are less valuable toward the end of the game, as often times you will put yourself in far too much danger to make best use of them.
Board Strategy
Hitting things with shields pushes the unit away. If that would push them off the board, they poof. If that would push them into another unit, then they poof. So prioritize doing that. Play defensively. Winning a level will heal one point of damage, and that’s it. Playing cards with shields allows you to soak more damage, but if you have no shields, end your turn on an unthreatened space if at all possible. If you have mostly pawns in the draw pile, avoid leaving yourself in a situation where a pawn move isn’t possible. I don’t know how many times I have found myself with two good pawn cards in my hand and no possible move. And was then slaughtered. Hitting something that is shielded that doesn’t poof changes the map of threatened spaces, so that safe spot you were eyeing might now be gone. The Pawnbarian’s pawn promotion power is game-changing, so do make use of it whenever possible.
Using these strats, I can make it through the Goblin Caves about 75% of the time. Sometimes, you just get unlucky. Sometimes, there just are no good moves. It happens. Start over. It doesn’t take long to play a dungeon.
The Gauntlet
There is a post-run challenge, The Gauntlet, that lets you continue the run as long as you can. There are no store levels and no heals in the Gauntlet. I haven’t gotten too far, there, but it’s always fun to go alone against a crowd of monsters and come out the other end, soaked in blood, with a pawn in one hand and a knight in the other.
Video embedded above of the end of one run. Not my best run, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the moves, and I made one or two mistakes, but it should show how even hopeless positions can be worked through with patience.
I like the game, and I will definitely be purchasing it as soon as I get at least a couple games off my backlog…
Looks pretty cool! Thanks for the showcase!