Bloody Checkers

Developer: Kerry

Cost: 1 dollar

Checkers is one of those games that you really only find when when you buy chess/checkers board sets. You might play it one afternoon with your grandparents or friends, but its nothing most people spend any serious time with, compared to chess at any rate.

But if one spends time with this game, you’ll begin, like I did, to appreciate checkers’ strategic subtleties. Like how you must plan moves out as far as chess in order to force your opponent to move in a way that will allow you to double or triple jump up the board, sometimes having to sacrifice your own pieces in the process. The AI here is a crafty and skilled opponent and will keep you on your toes.  But if this package was just checkers, it would be good, but not spectacular. It’s what else this package brings that makes it outstanding.

The most hardcore checkers around.

Bloody Checkers wraps itself in a first person adventure of sorts. You enter a mysterious dungeon and instead of fighting enemies to proceed, you must play checkers against haunted painting of dead nobles.  When you first start a match, you can get set one of traps on a board.When an opponent(or you) land on a trap, it springs, your piece gets bloody and money goes to you or your opponent. In addition to the traps, there are also four attacks, like axes or arrows, that fall from above, and if they hit a piece, give you exp. If you win, you get more gold and gems.

The gold is more important that the EXP, as it buys traps, as well as important items to carry around, like a harp that finds hidden rooms, oil that prevents your candle from burning out, or key that open locked doors.  You buy these items from a skeleton named Creaky, either from his store painting or from him directly if he’s following you or you find you walking around.

The levels you can gain will affect how well certain items perform like flint stones, which re-light your candle, and I believe traps and attacks.

I hate the candle.

The candle you carry is my only real complaint about the game, in the sense that you must keep it lit at all times, or you can’t access paintings. If you don’t have a flint stone handy if the wind, or your sprinting, blows it out, you must trek all the way back to the save point and relight. It gets really annoying after awhile. My other problem is the odd choice to put the difficulty slider in the sound options menu.

Other than that, I cannot recommend Bloody Checkers highly enough. The review would have appeared much earlier in the week, if I didn’t spend so much time playing it. It’s creative, it’s challenging, it gives checkers the spotlight it deserves. Even if you finish the very long single player, there’s always online play to keep you going.

An instant must play.

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