You wait at the bus stop for ages, then 2 come along at once. The same’s just happened for me with chess-but-not-chess games! (Yeah, I know the bus saying is 3, but the doesn’t work for the games… unless there’s another out there, waiting for me.) Just a few days after encountering The Pawn’s Gambit, I found Rook & Ruin. This time, rather than a card game, it’s a maze-based puzzle interpretation of Chess. Its designer, Florian Fiedler, describes it as: ‘A solo PnP puzzle game blending chess tactics & dungeon grids! Primarily played by printing & cutting unique Grandmaster cards for a true deckbuilding feel. Alternatively, jump straight into the action using the innovative “Flowing Arsenal” sheet system! Acquire chess piece movements to solve intricate labyrinth challenges. Think like a Grandmaster!’ (He seems to have a fondness for exclamation marks.)
Rook & Ruin is a solo game, estimated to take 20 minutes to play, for ages 8 and up. Your task is to navigate your King through a maze that looks somewhat like an empty crossword puzzle (the Dungeon) using only valid Chess piece moves (with a few restrictions). The Dungeon is populated with opponent pieces, which will place you in check if you move into the wrong space (all such spaces conveniently indicated with crosshatching), but you can capture them to remove them from the board.
Game Play
On game start, you choose a Grandmaster card: this defines which Echoes (i.e., cards) form your starting deck (3 of which you will take as your starting hand), and includes a Brilliancy, granting you a special ability to use during the game. Most Echoes are chess-piece-like cards which define what moves your King can take; for example, a Pawn lets you move a single square up the board (or diagonally to capture), or a Rook lets you move up/down or left/right, but unlike ‘real’ Rooks, these have distance limitations. Initially, your Rook (Bishop and Queen, too) can move up to 3 spaces, but you have the option of upgrading them during the game to move 5 spaces, and then to either arbitrary distances or remain at 5 spaces but with the ability to capture any enemy piece whose path you cross.
On your turn, you step the time counter along a spot and play one of your Echoes; if it’s a piece card, you move your King appropriately. The Dungeon contains a number of marked squares; I’ve already mentioned opposing pieces, and if you land on one of those, you take the piece and gain a number of Material points (which can be used to buy new cards to add to your discard pile). There are Shield and Cog symbols too, and landing on a square with those adds the appropriate resource to your collection. As noted earlier, you can’t normally place your King in check, but spending a Shield will protect you against that. Cogs can be used to upgrade your Rook, Bishop and Queen. Playing a non-piece card gains you the indicated resources or additional time steps.
After this, you can buy cards or perform an upgrade, and optionally use a Universal Ability—these let you, for example, pay a time step to swap any number of cards from your hand, or pay 5 Material resources to gain an additional 3 time steps. At the end of the turn, you draw back up to 3 cards, shuffling and using the discard deck when there are none left to play.
The game ends either when you run out of time, or when you capture your opponent’s King, hiding somewhere in the dungeon.
An alternative game mode is also provided, the Flowing Arsenal system. Here, you don’t actually have physical cards, which simplifies things a lot for people printing at home. Instead, there’s a mechanism for marking on a provided page which cards would be in your hand if playing ‘normally,’ and indicating which you play by copying them into a discard pile column, which becomes your deck when that’s empty. You use dice rolls to simulate drawing from the deck (so you’ll need to find some dice).
Conclusion
While Rook & Ruin’s look is rather basic, I do like the game mechanic, with legal moves defined by Chess piece behaviour. The little descriptions on Grandmaster cards about the inspiration for the special abilities are a nice touch.
The project offers several pledge levels. First, there’s ‘The Novice,’ the basic Print & Play files, which includes all the cards and 3 dungeon sheets. Or you can choose ‘The Path to Mastery,’ where you’ll get a new dungeon sheet every week for a year, which is a neat idea—
and looking at the number of backers and amount pledged, it seems to be very popular. One interesting option is ‘The Editor,’ providing design templates for the game, so you can make your own grandmasters or dungeons.
You can find out more about the game on its Gamefound page, including a copy of the rule book.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
