Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate Review (Switch eShop)

Chess is one of the most ancient games in existence, and while we continue to eagerly await the fabled release of the completely real Chess 2, it can be fun to see how modern game makers choose to iterate on the classic design. In Shotgun King, the latest release from Headbang Club and developer Punkcake Délicieux, we get a chance to see what a game of chess would be like if it had roguelike elements and you could shoot pieces with a shotgun. It’s ridiculous, shockingly difficult, and incredibly addictive once you understand it, making for a great experience all around.

The narrative in Shotgun King is kept pretty simple; you play as the evil Black King whose wicked and tyrannical ways have driven all of his once-loyal followers to desert him and join the White King’s army. Wounded by their betrayal and unwilling to own up to his mistakes, the king chooses to retrieve his trusty old shotgun for some good old-fashioned revenge, blowing away any pieces that stand in his way as he makes his last play for the White King’s head. It’s silly and the story hardly features beyond this basic premise, but we nonetheless appreciated the little cutscenes included to build up this little lore.

Shotgun King could be best described as a roguelike take on chess, with guns. The only piece you have on your side is your king, while the white team can have any number and combination of pieces. But while they can only move and attack you using standard chess rules (usually), you have a shotgun that has plenty of reach and enough power to turn them to rubble. As in a typical game of chess, the goal of each level is to simply defeat the enemy’s king, but that becomes an increasingly weird and difficult task the further in that you get.

Your shotgun initially only has a couple of shots in the chamber with a handful of slugs in reserve, and a big part of the strategic gameplay of each level is figuring out when to move and when to act. You can either move or shoot, but you can’t do both in one turn, and reloading either costs you a turn or takes place automatically when you move. Meanwhile, the enemy team will waste no time in trying to box you in, and if you find yourself in check, there’s usually not many options to get out of it. On some level, then, you still need to approach each level as you would a normal game of chess, planning out your moves and adapting quickly to enemy movements.

Notably, you’re forced to choose between three randomly generated pairs of upgrade cards after winning each level—one of the cards will buff your king, while the other one will buff the enemy team. This can lead to some nicely nail-biting choices, as you often have to weigh choosing between the best upgrade for you and the worst upgrade for your foes. That enhanced range upgrade for your shotgun may be just what you need for your build, but is it worth grabbing if it means that the enemy will begin each round with an extra queen on their side? On the other hand, if you don’t go somewhat aggressive and ensure that your king is properly kitted out, you’re going to get spanked in the later levels when going up against an increasingly overpowered enemy team.

What’s most welcome about this system is how it allows you to create builds for both your king and your enemies, which lends itself to quite a bit of diversity between runs due to the creative modifiers that can be introduced. For example, one upgrade for the enemy team will randomly choose a pawn on the other team as the ‘heir’, and killing the king will cause the heir to be promoted to another king you have to destroy. In another example, you can pull a card for your king that creates a randomized ‘sidequest’ on each level where getting your king to a specific tile will let you activate a powerful, one-time use effect from a short menu. This kind of gameplay diversity makes Shotgun King an impressively addictive ‘one more run’ sort of game, as the relatively fast pace and variety keep you coming back for more.

Once you finally beat a run—which only takes about 20 minutes or so and culminates in an amusingly over-the-top boss fight—you can then continue to climb the ranks by upping the difficulty level. Every new difficulty level will add more permanent modifiers, such as the enemy team starting with an extra rook, and you have to complete a run under these new conditions before you can unlock the next difficulty level. Completing these and achieving certain objectives within them unlocks new guns to start a run with, altering your approach even further. We appreciated how this difficulty system adds a sense of forward progression to the experience, giving you something more to achieve than simply running everything again with a different build.

There’s also an endless mode you can attempt that tasks you with getting as far as you can before you inevitably slip up, and a horde mode where chess pieces will spawn every few turns from the borders. While neither of these substantially change the gameplay loop, they nonetheless add more fun challenges for you to overcome. Plus, there are achievements to hunt down across all three modes, which gives completionists plenty to chase.

Visually, Shotgun King sticks with a retro pixel art style—there’s even a filter for a CRT effect for the screen. Graphics are kept relatively simple, however, with only about three colors being represented on screen at once. Though we would’ve appreciated a little more visual flair in this regard, the old-school aesthetic works well here and feels like a good fit overall for this kind of game. This is matched by an equally retro chiptune soundtrack—nothing too catchy here, but it helps set the somewhat serious tone.