Chess is a violent, violent game. Don’t let those small innocent plastic or wooden pieces fool you. Each pawn that is sacrificed or gambited away represents thousands and thousands of men slaughtered in the defense of the king. It’s a cruel world. Especially the way I play chess, no one is spared. It’s a game of attrition. Everyone dies. Only the king and maybe some lucky pawn will live – yes, the pawn who will make the charge to the other side where he will lose his manhood, but in return, will become the most powerful creature in its universe.
Chess is violent, and it’s more so because the violence is in the player’s imagination.
Nothing left to imagination in Warhmmer 40,000: Regicide, though. The gameplay trailer shows us the familiar chess board so that we know it’s a chess game. But before viewers can say, “Aw, chess?” they switch on the marketing push. Blood and gore. Heads get squished. Bodies chopped. It ain’t pretty, but it’s chess like we’ve always imagined it.
It’s called regicide, which is the action of killing a king. But in chess, there’s no killing the king. It’s more about trapping the king and making him your puppet. That’s true power. But it’s regicide because it sounds cool, and killing is more violent than trapping.
Warhammer 40,000: Regicide has a traditional chess mode, but it also has a Regicide mode, which involves more strategy and variations in battles utilizing individual unit abilities and equipment. The factions so far include Space Marines and the Orks.
Hammerfall Publishing’s game is out in May 2015 on Windows, iOS and Android.