I’ll admit it: one of my biggest blind spots is chess. I don’t know the rules, let alone how the pieces move, and yes, you can go ahead and laugh; I deserve it.
Lately, however, many games have been incorporating mechanics inspired by this board game, blending its rules with other genres, most often roguelites. The latest to do so is Below the Crown, an intriguing roguelite developed by Misfits Attic, the studio behind the award-winning strategy title Duskers.
The game blends chess, roguelite progression, and dungeon crawling into a focused tactics experience for PC.
Players step into the role of a Wizard who commands a party of chess-inspired pieces across procedurally changing dungeons.
Bishops and Knights are specifically called out, with mentions of a fearsome Mad Queen as a potential unit. Encounters can be approached with careful positional play or by leaning on direct spellcasting, including freezing effects and explosive options.
The core loop layers tactical movement on a grid with a card-and-skill-driven toolkit that expands as you unlock new spells and abilities during successive runs.
Progression revolves around gearing up for the next descent while tuning difficulty with a rune system. Collected runes can be assigned to raise the challenge level in exchange for greater rewards, giving experienced players a way to ratchet tension and newcomers a clear path to push themselves at their own pace.
Beyond competing in rotating challenges, players can create and share custom boards and watch replays of high-scoring runs from other Wizards. The team also teases glitchy psychological evaluations during play, used to peel back the larger mystery suggested by the title.
It reads like a tone mix of dark humor and meta commentary that Misfits Attic has leaned on before, now framed within an ’80s-tinged sci-fi aesthetic rather than a hard sci-fi shell.
Misfits Attic positions this project as a return for the studio nearly a decade after Duskers, with staff credits spanning games and film. The Early Access push follows an August reveal at The MIX tied to a Q4 window and Steam Next Fest demo plans, which have now narrowed to a firm November 10 launch date and the public demo drop.
The demo is now available on Steam, and the Early Access build is scheduled for release on November 10, 2025, on Windows PC. Below is the announcement trailer.
