Shinogi Chess Club is a hybrid-genre experience that combines Visual Novel storytelling with free-roaming 3D exploration and a playable strategy game! Uncover the secrets of Yoshino High School, compete against various AI opponents in the Spring Championships, and join the Shinogi Chess Club!

In the far future, the world has been plunged into an economic depression. One prefecture in Japan has managed to stay afloat by investing in a new board game variant called Shinogi Chess. Companies, governments, and institutions have all shifted their focus towards getting their best representatives to play for public amusement.

Yoshino High School is one such institution. Their Shinogi Chess Club is on the verge of being able to compete in the Spring Championships, an annual competition bringing fame and fortune to the city's best players.
In the midst of this huge event, an upcoming competitor, Himiko Masaki, attempts to improve her skill in the game in order to chase down leads and stop a dangerous organization that's threatening the school. But when she acquires a mysterious supernatural ability, her sense of self is put to the test. With the help of the Shinogi Chess Club members, Himiko must navigate these challenges and discover just how far she is willing to go for the truth!

Acting as a successor to the acclaimed Burden of Proof, Shinogi Chess Club advances RobProductions' iconic visual novel hybrid style. Free roam the 3D environment throughout the story as you explore Yoshino High School in third person!

Discover vital clues as Himiko investigates a dangerous organization
Explore the Shinogi Chess Club Room and other key locations around the school
Compete with the best of the best in the Spring Championship tournament

In this world, the entertainment craze of the future is a brand new variant of traditional chess. One key difference is the addition of new objectives and new piece types, which add a whole new layer of strategy for each turn. But the main feature of Shinogi Chess is piece stacking. Place pieces on top of each other to create a stack, which allows you to move both pieces at the same time!

Face off against various opponents who are introduced through the story segments. Learn their strategy by studying their personalities in order to effectively counter their moves. Discover new features of the game by experimenting with different stack types, plan your approach with move highlighting & a full reference book, and employ mind games to psych out other players with Hidden Pieces!

Full standalone story experience set in the world of Burden of Proof
Meet the members of the Shinogi Chess Club & solve a series of mysteries at the school
Battle a variety of opponents in fully playable Shinogi Chess segments
Test your skills & play custom battles in the flexible Practice Mode
Explore Yoshino High School using the 3rd person controls
Challenge your friends to Shinogi Chess with local multiplayer via Practice Mode
Adjust the AI difficulty to your liking or use the Story Mode setting to skip the challenges entirely
Revamped visual novel interface with adjustable text size & autoplay
4k screen support & compatible with any framerate
Native versions for Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux
Support for common input hardware, including the Xbox & DualShock controllers
Complete subtitle support and other common accessibility features
Full original soundtrack & album release

Shinogi Chess Club 1.2.0 Update

The new update for Shinogi Chess Club is now live and available for download!

Update Details

Update size:

Windows: ~22.6 MB
Mac: ~13 MB
Linux: ~13 MB

Changelog:

Added sound effects when toggling Himiko's Power
New option: Debug Cam Key
When Debug Cam Key is on, you can activate debug cam without risk of hitting other debug keys
Fixed AI null reference error by only allowing match restart if it's your turn

A crucial bugfix was deployed which is meant to stop a rare case which caused an error in the AI decision functions. Though this error didn't seem to have serious consequences for impacting the game logic, I figured it's better to be safe than sorry, and implemented new logic to disable the "Restart" button at certain times. Now, you can only use the Restart button in the pause menu when it's a human player's turn in a Shinogi Chess match. This fix had one downside though in that if you set up a Practice Match with 2 AI players, you'll never be able to restart since one of them will always have the "current turn" status. However, you can still use the match setup button to create a new match with the same parameters so I figured this was an acceptable tradeoff.

Besides that, I included a new sound effect to better indicate when you turn on or off Himiko's Power. This should help avoid accidental misclicks and further clarify what you can affect when its your turn. In Shinogi Chess Club 2, further improvements will be made to the board effects so that feedback is provided when you capture a piece or preview enemy movements.

Finally, I added a new option called Debug Cam Key which enables use of the "P" key to enter Debug Camera mode. This mode was previously available, but you would've had to enable Debug Keys in order to utilize it, and the Debug Keys option also enabled buttons which start a random match, exit out of scenes, and change the skybox, all of which can mess up the experience if used incorrectly. This new option is meant to act as a user-friendly way to access the debug cam without worrying that it will break the game. Feel free to enable it and enter/exit the mode at your discretion!

That's all for now, but in case you missed it, the sequel to Shinogi Chess Club is now Coming Soon on Steam ! If you're able to give it a wishlist, that's one of the best ways to support the game. I did a bit of a write up on what you can expect from this next title here ! As always, you can follow me on Twitter for the latest news about the new project. Thanks for playing, and I'll hope to catch up again with some more announcements soon!
-Matt

[ 2023-09-10 17:38:43 CET ] [Original Post]

Minimum Setup

OS: Ubuntu 18.04+
Processor: Intel Core i5 @1.6GHz or EquivalentMemory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 820M or Equivalent (OpenGL 3.2+)
Storage: 5 GB available spaceAdditional Notes: Older hardware is supported. but may suffer from performance issues.