I thought I’d have Gambonanza on lockdown. See, I’ve been doing chess lessons on Duolingo. Not quite sure why it’s there, as not many people speak chess, but it’s appreciated. I’ve been playing chess for all of my life. I know all about pinning, forking, and other vaguely suggestively named moves. Then I start up Gambonanza and no king is on the board. That’s sort of fundamental to chess. As it turns out, a lot of key components of chess have been thrown in the bin, for better or worse.
I also wasn’t sure how the title fit in at first. When I first saw it, I pictured a Frenchman getting excited over a big plate of ham. Either way, my experience with Gambonanza was something of a rollercoaster. I enjoyed myself a lot at the start, but this quickly began to go downhill. The enjoyment came from a nice central idea, and flashy presentation. But it digs out so many chess mechanics, and the spackle it replaces it with isn’t doing the job.
The Two-Halves Gambit
Gambonanza has a fairly unique take on chess. Checks and Mates are no longer a thing, instead the object is to capture all of the enemy pieces on the board. You start with a couple of pieces (one of which is usually a queen), while the enemy starts off with pawns. Before long they start throwing the heavy stuff at you. Once you’ve brushed up on how the pieces move, the challenge becomes laying traps for the AI and trying not to fall into them yourself. Pulling off a chain of smart moves does feel good.
The roguelike elements help with that too. Gambonanza has you going through five levels, with five stages each, and a boss at the end of each one. These bosses mix up the mechanics, like switching your pieces around. To help counter this, you have ‘gambits’, that do all sorts of effects. In my last game I had one that promoted pawns that moved next to a king, then skipped the enemy’s turn. The right combination of Gambits can crack the game in your favour, particularly if it complements how you generally approach chess.
On top of that is a rather nice presentation, that goes for simplicity above all else. In a game like this, you need to be able to identify pieces at a glance. You need to know when you’re about to be blindsided by a knight. Gambonanza uses the standard chess piece format, but the animations are nice and taking pieces feels like it has weight to it. The boss designs are nice too, with appropriate chess puns in their names. I like the overlong unskippable animations a lot less, but they’re nice the first time around. There’s no denying that Gambonanza is dripping in style.
The Nitpicking Gambit
Initially, I was quite enchanted with Gambonanza. The exciting presentation and the ability to flex my chess muscles won me over. And yet, by the time I stopped playing it to write this review, I was quite fed up. It took some digging to figure out why, but I think it stems from one simple occurrence right at the start: I won my very first run, without much difficulty. I was given a gambit in the tutorial that skipped the AI’s turn every time I took a piece with a pawn. That broke the entire game. After that, I began to realise that every subsequent run was just… going through the motions.
Part of that is down to the roguelike mechanics. I’ve said before that roguelikes live and die on their ability to tackle repetition and Gambonanza does poorly on this front. The starting board layouts are the exact same every run, for one thing, so you’ll repeat the same moves constantly. While the bosses are fun, they also follow this pattern. Added to that is the fact that the gambits vary a lot in usefulness. I was constantly being presented with gambits that trigger off pieces I don’t have, or are just uninspired ways of earning cash.
I get that cash flow is a big part of it, but Gambonanza is heavily inspired by Balatro. The jokers in that worked had to keep things fresh. Once those elements are stripped, we’re left with a chopped up game of chess. Having no check mechanics makes kings near useless, and queens near broken. You also can’t trade pieces, a key chess mechanic, because once they’re gone, they’re gone. What definitely doesn’t help is a breathtakingly stupid AI, that constantly leaves pieces hanging or just moves them straight in the line of your pieces.
Gambonanza – Brutally Stripped Down Chess
As a result of all this, all of my runs began to bleed together. The few runs where I had interesting gambits did stand out, but they serve more as reminds of what could be, rather than what Gambonanza currently is. In truth, most of my runs came to an end because I’d just lost focus. All the boards blended together and I’d lose track of what gambits I had this time because they’d mostly sit quietly in the corner. So I would end up placing a piece without double checking and be on the back foot.
That said, while Gambonanza’s spark did snuff itself after a while, there still was a spark there. It just needed to better differentiate its runs. I’d honestly rather have fewer bosses a run, but more individual stages. If those stages had more starting layouts, then we’d be in a good place. As it is, Gambonanza’s central idea is great, but it absolutely does not hold up well to the rigors of roguelike repetition.
