Blade of Valor
Hidden-Chess Driven Dark Fantasy Platformer
Published Dec 23, 2024
Where a struggle between humanity and its creations quietly persists, can you possess free will, or are you part of a greater design?
I'm building a unique dark fantasy platformer that merges action gameplay with invisible chess mechanics. According to YouGov survey, 43% of Americans neither know nor want to learn chess, I set out to create something unprecedented.
A Phaser 3/NextJS/FastAPI platformer where every action drives a hidden chess game powered by Stockfish AI. Drawing inspiration from Grimes' music video "Player of Games" and Legend (1985)'s ethereal atmosphere, it follows Elara - an artificial entity in a collapsing simulation created by the enigmatic Architect.
- Invisible Chess Integration: Player movements translate to chess moves, affecting the number of shadow creatures (darklings) they face
- Light/Dark Duality: Elara can harness both powers, but darkness corrupts her chess strategy
- Story-Driven Gameplay: Progress through Opening, Midgame, and Endgame while uncovering the nature of free will
- Dynamic Difficulty: Chess position quality determines enemy encounters
- Crystal Collection: Defeat darklings to maintain balance between light and dark
- S3/CloudFront: Secure asset storage including animation JSONs
- EC2: Hosts containerized application
- DynamoDB: Handles leaderboards and game states
- Amazon Q: Assisted with AWS integration
- PartyRock: Enhanced narrative development
Current Status:
Dialogue finalized, character animation and cutscenes near completion. The FasAPI backend runs Stockfish in a debian:bookworm-slim container. Focus shifts to level design that seamlessly integrates chess strategy with platforming mechanics.