Below the Crown is an curious brew of chess and dungeon crawling out now

Out now in Early Access, from the minds that gave us the excellent Duskers, Below the Crown is a mixture of chess-like pieces and moves in a dungeon crawler. Note: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

It's a "dungeon crawler for everyone" they say, that is only somewhat loosely related to chess and you don't need to be some sort of grand master to play through this one. You start off by picking a deck that gives you a few chess-like pieces in the form of cards, and move through different randomly generated dungeons using your wizard who can summon your pieces. Your wizard can be a king, bishop, knight and others - with each giving you a different set of cards to summon and some have special abilities.

Starting off in each room with only your main piece, the rooms are all small self-contained puzzles to smash through. Make a move, summon a piece if you have any left to bring into play and keep moving around the board. The idea is to beat each room by either: getting a checkmate, getting the AI enemy king to withdraw by being the last piece left, or getting your king to a door. It's not just standard chess pieces though, as they've introduced some new pieces to keep things fresh and you get an assortment of spells to throw the game in your favour too. It's not just plain square board layouts either, there's a few different shapes that present their own unique challenges to think on as well.

Thankfully, it is true that you don't need to really understand chess to play this at all. Everything is very clearly presented. And with the amount of pieces each side controls, there's no information overload here. Just a few pieces at a time, with each having a clear set movement pattern you can see by hovering your mouse over them anytime. There's even a turn assist feature, for the game to suggest moves if there's something good for you to do, so it's quite accessible too.

It's all a bit strange. From the retro visuals to the strange psychological questions you have to answer that "may or may not impact runs". Just what exactly is going on here? They've somehow given a chess-like a bit of an unnerving atmosphere.

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While it's turn-based, it's certainly not chilled. Part of the difficulty here is that if you take too too many turns, the board will start self-destructing with tiles getting a turn timer so you need to ensure your pieces aren't there. Reducing the size of the board forces both sides closer together, and really does make your brain sweat a bit.

The presentation is supremely slick too. I love the way the game moves between boards, and the overall feel of it is perfect for the type of game it is.

“Below the Crown wouldn’t be what it is today without the incredible minds on the Misfits Attic team," said Tim Keenan, Founder, Misfits Attic. “Our diverse experiences on films and games have enabled us to give Below the Crown its own distinct, mysterious identity. We hope chess enthusiasts and beginners alike enjoy digging into this dynamic world of strategy, magic, and retro vibes in Early Access!"

A full formal opinion will be saved for when it's released properly, which the developer estimates will be in about 5 months while they add a bit more of everything into the game. So far though, it is a lot of fun to play through as a weird blend of game genres and mechanics that ends up as a bit of a brain-tickling puzzle to get through.

There are a couple of resolution related bugs I've encountered. If the game resolution does not match your desktop, some UI will go off the screen, and if you alt+tab the mouse position is messed up making it basically unplayable. It was supposed to have been solved before, but it's still a problem. You'll need to ensure you match the game resolution up to your desktop for now. This is likely a problem with it specifically with Proton and they did say previously a Native Linux version is planned.

Misfits Attic have once again crafted something unique, that I really need more hours in the day to play. Deliciously engrossing to try and beat everything in it. It's proven once again that I'm terrible at anything resembling chess, but the challenge of it is so clever it makes me want to dive in again and again. This definitely deserves a whole lot more players.