Pawned Souls
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
[ Soulslike combat meets Chess ]
Step onto the board as a single pawn. Move forward, strike diagonally, and defeat every enemy piece on the board to claim your promotion.
✦ Controls ✦
| PC / Gamepad | Action |
|---|---|
W
A
S
D
/
L-Stick
|
Movement |
LMB
/
LB
|
Attack Left / Parry |
RMB
/
RB
|
Attack Right / Parry |
L-Shift
/
RT
|
Dodge Roll |
Space
/
LT
|
Shield |
H
/
A
|
Heal |
Esc
/
Menu
|
Pause & Upgrades |
✦ The Enemies ✦
Every enemy moves and attacks straight out of chess:
♙ Pawns: Frontline fodder that attack 1 tile diagonally.
♘ Knights: Jump over tiles and strike in L-shapes.
♗ Bishops: Long range diagonal attack & special projectile attack.
♖ Rooks: Long range line attacks & special AOE attack.
♕ The Queen: Fast, aggressive, hits from almost every angle & special AOE attack.
♔ The King: ??
✦ Special Thanks ✦
⥽ ORIGINAL MUSIC & COMPOSITION ⥼
❖Nate Sassoon
"In Combat with Knights and Masks"
↳ Featuring Frame Drum performance by Destin Wernicke
"The Barrow"
✦ Performance & Testing
Runs smoothly on low end laptops, and hits 250–300 FPS on RTX 3050.
Platforms:
✔ Windows
✔ Linux / ⏳ Steam Deck/Machine (in testing)
✔ Mac
✦ Join the Community ✦
For suggestions, balance feedback, and bug reports, join our new Discord server:
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Pawned Souls Update 1.0.6.14 days ago
- Pawned Souls Update 1.055 days ago
- Pawned Souls Update 1.0412 days ago
Comments
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Android:v
make it multiplayer please, very funny but short game
It was so fun! We need more levels !!
My dad really wants to play this game on his phone! Please consider making an Android app :(
ты долбаеб сука хули ты мувсеты предугадывать им поставил
I've been trying to reach out to the developers of the game with a business offer. Could you please share the appropriate contact information? ^^
That voice on the 'ad' I saw for it grabbed my attention! Gonna try it and come back with an update!
What ad lol?
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DcrtpLCo4KX/
Lucky you! You got high-quality marketing for free
new update isnt letting me use PC controls and is forcing me into controller even tho i have no controller plugged in or connected to said pc
The game auto switches between keyboard/mouse and controller whenever you press a key and supports both at once.
I can't seem to replicate this on my end but it might be caused by a virtual gamepad or driver running in the background.
A new update just went live so make sure to update first. If the issue is still there grab a quick recording and send it over on Discord so I can take a look and get it fixed. Cheers!
好
So I don't know if it's the build i'm on or what but is there a way to move your pawn around without moving there facing position? I've watched others play the game and when they move side to side or back there pawn faces the camera but when I play the pawn faces the direction i am move in which is a problem cause the rooks move to fast for your pawn to turn around and hit them after dodge there attacks and positioning yourself to face them. I think the game would benefit with a button that switches the movement type to help this or maybe a setting to have the pawn always attack in the direction the camera itself is facing.
In build 1.05 I tried tying attacks to the pawn's facing direction which forced the movement to turn with your input.
The new build reverts it back to the strafing mechanic, and attacks follow the camera direction again. Grab the latest version(1.0.6.1) and let me know how it feels. Cheers!
love this game!!!
https://www.kamtape.com/watch?v=1ClRHxnVDdU
Me and your team are gonna have some beef lmaooo i freaking love this game and hope it expands more. Imma just let my experience speak for itself
The baseline systems are, I would say, quite engaging. I do feel that the game needs polished a lot overall, though!
Parrying feels... Overall useless. If anything, in a lot of situations it's actively detrimental (for example, with Knights; blocking one puts them in precisely the right position to counterattack, whereas parrying leaves them in position to attack again).
It feels like parrying is the worst of your defensive options, behind blocking and... moving normally.
The shop system I assume is designed for something much larger, since in the 'time trial'-esque formats of the two main gamemodes, all it really serves to do is to give the player a cooler sword before you kill the Queen. The feeling of progression would be perhaps better in, as some others suggested, an endless mode of sorts.
Most of my issues, I'd say, are to do with the parrying mechanic. In soulslikes, parrying is usually a high-risk, high-reward way to punish an attack; getting the timing just right to deal heavy damage or one shot most enemies. In this game, it accomplishes being high-risk, but feels overall unintuitive and unrewarding.
At best, parrying tends to just accomplish the same thing as blocking, but with far more risk.
Specifically, the way that parrying works--being bound to the same button as attacking and only being possible at all JUST before you're hit--feels unsatisfying to do and frustrating to fail, given that anything outside of the window just leads to making a full swing and eating a full hit.
I feel that the system could be worked on a lot more, given how much the game seems to promote it.
Other than that, I do like the demo! It's a promising enough proof of concept, even if there's not too much to chew on just yet.
fun game with good difficulty and great concept, would love to see a endless mode tho, the shop mechanic can be well exploited
Damn, this is a great way to teach kids how to play chess. I like the look and feel of this one because of the graphics and also the fact that you can switch perspectives and camera angles when attacking is pretty cool. I don't think I have seen that in a chess game before.
I have to wait for the Mac build, though...
Are the menus possible to navigate on gamepad or do you need a mouse for that? Because for some odd reason, it won't let me.
The next update (1.05) will add full support for gamepad menu navigation
It's a great game but please work more on the parry system, i also have a problem where thee animation delay my next attack. (it seem the animation has to play fully before my next attack).
6.7s is pretty sus haha but if it’s real you’re cracked!!
So it is possible
Still at the beginning and getting used to the controls, but just wanted to shout out that this is a super fun and creative idea, and I've been having a great time with it so far. Cheers for putting it up and I'd love to see an expanded version with more levels in the future, there'd absolutely be room to build this to something bigger if you wanted to.
So glad you had fun with it! Gonna keep working on it and turn it into a full game
muy buen juego la verdad, si fuera mas extenso pagaria por el
Runs beautifully via Crossover on my Mac.
What's the record for kings gambit beacause got 20.66 seconds
I got 7:05 seconds
The game does not open on my preferred monitor, instead choosing to always open on my secondary (I assume because widows decided that my secondary is supposed to be number 1).
Can you add a screen select to the game?
It would be logical to make the “favorite” monitor the primary one; this is easily set up in Windows.
shift + winkey + arrow keys changes monitor of almost any fullscreen application on windows
had this problem a couple times as well, and the keys always saved me
are you able to eventually make the game able to be played on a browser just sometime in the future
It's definitely possible in the future. The game is well optimized in terms of FPS but the current build size would make the browser loading screen way too long
okay thanks
I like the game however the sensitivity on the controller is way to high. i cant even stay still because the slightest micro movement (without touching my controller) sends the pawn jumping all over. This issue only ever occurs in one other game i own, so i doubt its simply just my controller at fault. There needs to be a way to tune down the sensitivity. After all, the movement is pretty simple so you dont need it to be sensitive to the point it responds the slightest tap.
For the record im using an Xbox one controller wirelessly. I'm gonna hold off on playing until theres a fix to this issue. Whether that be a patch or a completely new controller.
Thanks for trying the game and for the feedback! I'll add an option to adjust the stick deadzone/threshold in the next patch. Cheers!
Runs well on Snapdragon processor and ps5 controller but the menu navigation don't recognise X and joystick , the shield is pretty pointless tho if you can't parry and it takes stamina so why would you even want to use it?
Edit: I played sekiro as my only soulslike so I'm not really familiar with shields lmao so take it with grain of salt
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Controller menu navigation isn't fully set up in this build yet, but I'm working on it.
Parries have a super tight timing window while with a shield you can just hold it up before the enemy attack even starts so no perfect timing needed tho it drains stamina the longer you hold it.
Cheers!
it is literally the first soulslike i played (besides hollow knight.. that doesnt really count) i really liked it, i managed to get used to the knights movement, and learned a few tactics when facing the bishop, still just faced the rook, im still getting good, you should make it so that as you roll more, the cost of rolling increases(since rolling is constant at 15, thus you could cheese the entire upgrade system and buy rolls rather than upgrades), also, could you make a custom arena mode? so that players could test the enemies they faced and make new gauntlets (or maybe even make new enemies) that would be a really nice feature
Thanks for playing and for the awesome feedback!
btw defeating the knights literally puts you in the top 1% of players who managed to do it hehe.I'll definitely look more into enhancing the roll/stamina design.
Cheers!
Its well designed but to me the controls are hard to understand (mainly the camera) so this is something I would like to ask, could you add a camera snapping feature? Some way to be 100% sure which way you are facing. Thanks in advance
That's a great suggestion! I'll look into adding this feature in a future update Thanks for playing!
I look forward to playing more with each update
Is "Pawned Souls" coming to Steam in the future or no?
Yes!! I'm currently setting up the Steam page
The game is so cool! Good job.
Just two things to note:
1. Parrying has no advantage besides that it doesn't spend stamina unlike blocking
2. only once, a pawn enemy got completely out of the board, and i was getting hit wherever I went.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Just pushed an update addressing both:
- parries now grant +2 Souls and stun enemies longer.
-Added a failsafe for the ghost spawn bug so hopefully it shouldn't happen again.
Wow! Thank you so much for being so responsive!
I hope you make great and fantastic improvements and successes in your career
love the game! Beat kings gambit in 7.84, such a good and creative game!
Thanks for playing! That's a new record! 🔥
I love this neat spin on chess lol
Thanks for playing!
chess if it was actually good lol. played for 5 mins died to a knight instantly
ahahah the knight is OP! Thanks for giving it a shot!
Magaaaad it's so goooood!!!!! Great job on this one
Thank you <3