
Pawned Souls
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
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[ 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:
- Ofelia Argiró – A pawn's Elegy
- Nate Sassoon – In combat with knights and masks - The Barrow

Enjoyed the game?
Leaving a quick rating ★ and sharing your thoughts in the comments helps a ton with visibility!

Performance & Testing
Runs smoothly on low end laptops, and hits 250–300 FPS on RTX 3050.
Platforms:
✔ Windows (Live)
✔ Linux / ⏳Steam Deck (in testing)
⏳ Mac (coming next)
| Updated | 22 hours ago |
| Published | 3 days ago |
| Status | Released |
| Platforms | Windows, Linux |
| Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (5 total ratings) |
| Author | Mika |
| Genre | Action |
| Made with | Unity, Blender, Adobe Photoshop, Substance Painter & designer, Audacity |
| Tags | 3D, Action-Adventure, Chess, Indie, No AI, Singleplayer, Souls-like, Swords, Third Person |
| Average session | About an hour |
| Languages | English |
| Inputs | Keyboard, Mouse, Xbox controller, Joystick, Playstation controller |
| Accessibility | Color-blind friendly, Configurable controls, High-contrast, Interactive tutorial, Blind friendly, Textless |
| Links | YouTube |
| Content | No generative AI was used |
Download
Download NowName your own price
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Pawned Souls v1.04 Windows 258 MB
PawnedSoulsv1.04 Linux 338 MB
Development log
- Pawned Souls Update 1.041 day ago






Comments
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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!
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