Of all the board games out there, my favorite is still chess. It’s classic, (somewhat) easy to learn, and full of strategic decisions when pitted against another player. Yet, we really don’t see that many games modeled after chess directly aside from the odd Battle Chess here and there. Mystic Tales: Legend of the Janovi Gem takes much of its inspiration from chess, but integrates many different features so that it’s not “just” a rendition of chess. For one, it also utilizes a card battling system! Oh, and it’s also a free-to-play title meaning there’s a possibility of always finding someone who’s ready to play.
Digging into Mystic Tales: Legend of the Janovi Gem reveals that it follows in the footsteps of RPGs with a world-ending narrative and cast of heroes. Instead of playing with normal chess pieces, each is modeled after one of the characters. How will you keep track of who is what type of piece (ex: rook, pawn)? This much hasn’t been explained thus far, and tends to be the biggest downfall of creative chess pieces (both digitally and in special-edition physical chess sets). In any case, once an opponent’s – or your own – piece is lost it doesn’t simply get removed from the game. Instead, this is when the turn-based card battling system comes into play.
The specifics of card battling haven’t been laid out so far, but it’s safe to say that the chess portions play mostly like typical chess. Mystic Tales: Legend of the Janovi Gem requires a fair lot of funding, $75,000, to have a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Track the progress of the Tales: Legend of the Janovi Gem Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.
