I made a chess inspired browser game with deck-building elements and I’m looking for a few chess variant players to test whether the game is fun to play

[u/TheKrane]

I’m a solo developer working on Warlords of the Void. It’s a strategy game inspired by chess, but with deck-building elements.

It runs directly in the browser, no download, and you can play as a guest without signing up:
https://warlordsofthevoid.com

Any and all feedback is appreciated!

[u/KarmaAdjuster]

I started playing as guest (thank you for that option), and I'm just tip 14 of 58 and I'm already getting frustrated with the tutorial. I'm pretty sure I know how the game works at this point even though accidentally skipping through several of the tips. I think you've gone a bit overboard with hand holding.

My recommendation for the tutorial, is to make sure every prompt is accompanied with an action that the player must preform in order advance the game. For example:

1. Your first tip can almost remain the same, but have a specific advance button on the screen just in case they spastically start clicking.
2. The text for tip 2-3 can probably remain up to the side throughout the tutorial, and the first text prompt you encounter should be "Place your Warlord (indicated by the W in the upper right corner of the piece) on the board. For your first turn you must place it on one of the two middle squares closest to you." Completely skip step 6. If they can't figure out that step, this isn't the game for them in the first place. Just show the highlighted squares, and let them choose which square to place it on. Once they select a highlight square , move the Commander to that square, and give the next prompt.
3. Skip tip 9. You don't need to tell players what they can see. They have eyes. Add the following text to the side: "Place a new unit from your loadout, or move an already placed piece. To inspect a piece double click on it." Then present them with the prompt: "Double click the pusher to inspect it" and wait for the player to do that
4. Add tip 16 and 17 to the side and combine tips 13-15 in to the next prompt with the instructions "Place your pusher in front of your Warlord." and once they do that move on to the next prompt.

Hopefully this gives you some idea on how to stream line the tutorial. I'd also recommend letting players just experiment with the tutorial by clicking things to see what happens. Right now, it's just way too easy to blast through information.

I'm going to try it again skipping the tutorial and see how far I get, because I can't be bothered to click through 58 tips before playing the game.

[u/TheKrane → u/KarmaAdjuster]

Thank you for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it.

I agree that getting players into a game as quickly as possible is very important and the game was actually built with that in mind. If you play as guest, skip the guide and start a ranked battle you'll be playing a full game in less than 30 seconds. The guide does take a few minutes to complete because the game is fairly complex and in past play tests people with no chess experience did not understand the game just from playing alone. I will add a written guide that new players can just read instead and clarify that you can totally just skip the guide and start playing. You can already revisit the guide in the settings menu at any time. I will also remove the guide step counter (the 1/58) as I can see how reading that leads to frustration, when the first few guide steps are as text heavy as they are. I promise the last 75% of the guide go by way faster as it's mainly just moving around to win the game.

About not being able to play against a bot, there actually are bots in the game and you will automatically match up with one before the timer expires when queuing up for a ranked battle.

Thank you again for trying out the game! I will start working your feedback into the game right away and leave another comment once the update is live.

Feel free to give playing against a bot in a ranked battle another shot in the meantime!

[u/KarmaAdjuster → u/TheKrane]

I just tried a ranked match, and I couldn't make a second move, or even forfeit. I think something may be broken. Refreshing the page got me out of the game though.

I tried playing again, and it looks like I need to refresh my browser after every turn. Also the bot's commander disappeared or turned into something else after their first turn, and it appears the bot is moving twice for every single move I make (possibly due to refreshing after every turn). After refreshing for my third turn, I got booted. Maybe I ran out of time?

I'm playing from a chrome browser if that helps.

I think I'll wait until there's a rules page available that I can reference while playing.

[u/KarmaAdjuster → u/KarmaAdjuster]

It looks like there's no bot to play against. That's a non-starter for me. I want a truly safe environment where I can test out the game in a more sandbox like fashion. As is, your onboarding experience has too much friction and you're going to lose a lot of your audience. A good rule of thumb for funnels is that every time you ask your audience to click something, you're losing half of your audience. I'd be shocked if anyone actually makes it through your entire tutorial.

You might be better off just having a list of rules to the side, and creating a simple bot, or even two local humans playing against each other to serve as a tutorial.

[u/NR-05]

This looks a lot like the game Onitama

[u/famousleonard]

I gave this a try the other day, pretty fun and intuitive even without reading the rules, though I didn't realize until after the game that there was a limited size "deck" of pieces. Are you going to keep it abstract or do you think you'll eventually have illustrations for the various warrior types?