Dev Log 1 - Coming out of the shadows 2025-05-11

Hello all! My name is Phillip Lorish and I wanted to introduce you all to our game Forethought. Please forgive any poor graphics placeholders — they will be upgraded in the future.

As mentioned on the main page, this game is about planning out the perfect route to get to the end of the level in the fewest number of turns possible. The chess piece you currently play as is controlled by which tile you land on. Your moves are based on the type of chess piece you are, with some alterations to allow for more creative puzzles. For example:

You're currently playing as the rook. You'll notice there are some tiles highlighted. If you play chess, you know the rook can't jump over other pieces... so he can’t jump over the rock on the screen — makes sense. You might then ask: why aren’t the tiles just above, below, or beside the rook highlighted? That's one of the alterations.

The king and knight behave exactly as you'd expect:

• The king can move 1 space in any direction.
• The knight moves in an L-shape (2 spaces in one direction, then 1 space to the side) and can jump over obstacles.

There are some game balance changes that make the bishop and rook a little different from what you’d expect. The rook (horizontal/vertical) and bishop (diagonal) can move 2–4 spaces. So it's very possible that you end up needing to go backwards as a result of poor planning.

And if you really screw up and can't move at all, you can always hit rewind and go back to the last space and character — but you don’t get your turn back.

I first started working on this game as a 3D PC version several years ago. I let the scope get out of control and life got in the way. Maybe I’ll pursue that idea again in the future. If this game is successful — who knows?

As you may have guessed from the images, I'm not the most artistic person. So I’ve recently reached out to some artists to help define the game’s sounds and visuals. Nsihrakhi Pitanta has already put together some fun sound effects and music that I look forward to sharing. Lucio Saulino has been working on sketches, and we’ll have content to show you in the not-too-distant future.

That’s it for now — let me know what you think! Next week, I’ll release a gameplay video so you can see it in action.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

  Phil