Gambonanza releases this year, bringing the roguelike treatment to chess

It feels like gaming developers just follow trends nowadays. Fortnite blew up the Battle Royale genre; everything got one. Dead by Daylight did well, asymmetric horror for all. It seems like Balatro has kicked off the latest one, with tabletop favourites getting that roguelike treatment. 

The next offender of this is Gambonanza, a roguelike chess-builder by Paul Giovannini of Blukulélé Studio, scheduled to release on mobile this year. The slightly tortured name comes from the game's “gambit” system, which are the modifiers. Stuff like forcing your foe to skip a turn, or supercharging pieces. And all I can now think of is a pawn wearing a Rambo bandana and going nuts. 

You can upgrade your chessboard with special spaces for a tactical edge, and also keep some pieces in reserve to deploy at the best moment. I believe that used to be called “cheating” in the real game. It does sound pretty good, but it also makes me a little concerned. 

They are making roguelikes of everything

How long before a roguelike Tic-Tac-Toe, or Connect 4? A round of Solitaire, but with modifiers. That’s not to say this is necessarily a bad trend, but these novelty trends tend to burn out. I got sick of 4v1 horrors well before PUBG tried to shove Unfail in there, a mode that encapsulated my biggest fear. 

It was really, really basic, like Krafton just thought the concept alone would sell it. Same with battle royales, they bore me now. This roguelike Baltro-fication might lead to the same thing. I hate to badmouth small developers, but Dice of Karma already just replaced the cards with dice.

Maybe Gambonanza won’t be like that. It does actually sound rather interesting, and I would like to give it a try. I just hope that developers remember to keep it fresh, even if they do start to follow the same general blueprint.