Zugzwang

**Zugzwang** by Vanessa Jygon, Eleanor Jimmy

This game was compact and fun. It feature a plus-sign shaped map. Movement is N/E/S/W, but instead of having to return to the middle square, the direction you type takes you directly to that quadrant of the map.

This is a chess-based powerup game. You are a pawn, and all your enemies represent chess characters as well. You learn attacks from each enemy, and can try those attacks on other enemies.

The descriptions were well-done and interesting. The combat was fun at first, but I eventually began flinging everything I had at the enemies, as I had difficulty seeing the logic behind which attacks worked and didn't realized at first that order matters.

This games has a secret, it's (Spoiler - click to show)connected to another game in the 2024 Parsercomp. Regarding that:

(Spoiler - click to show)The game is made by the authors of 19 Once. Both games have very similar mechanics and can be solved in a similar way. After beating 19 Once, you can unlock a special command for Zugzwang, and vice versa. The special commentary for Zugzwang makes it much better, giving you that vibe of a friend group that likes each other but has a tenuous hold, with some being grating or weird but you stick with them for now.

Very fun concept.