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We spotted this Portuguese indie effort at the BCN Game Fest by IndieDevDay and then Fragile Shapes were nominated for the DevGAMM Awards in Lisbon, where we finally were able to catch up with Gilherme and Bruno about this game where chess rules don't exactly apply.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is the DevGAMM in Lisbon, day 2, and I'm taking a look at some of the indie games that have been nominated for tonight's awards, and one of them is Beyond the Board.
I think I love the concept behind this game, and I love how you change chess, basically. What were you nominated for?
We were nominated for the best Portuguese game."
"How did the concept come up for this crazy mixture between strategic chess and sort of crazy action?
I think it's an interesting story that it began with what if we mixed Monument Valley with chess, and then we started imagining what it is to play in this world.
And we figured out that chess rules don't apply to this world, it's very deterministic, so we need to invent ours."
"And so it began kind of a story of telling how you end up in this world and how things become like this.
What can you do in this world that doesn't follow the chess rules precisely?
So yeah, like you begin from the very beginning, you kind of checkmate your opponent, but instead of the game ending, a lightning strikes and sends all the pieces into this other world, and you understand that the enemies can dodge, and yeah, there's a whole bunch of mechanics that are different."
"And kind of the point of the game is kind of like Alice in Wonderland, but with chess you kind of fall into this world where logic is different and you have to figure out your way around it.
Okay, so it's like puzzle-level based, or is there a solution to every level, or is it more open-ended in that you can try stuff in a more action-based way?
So there are puzzles that are deterministic in that sense, but I think our world is dictated by the story."
"You'll progress in this world, progress in the spaces, in the dungeons, and in themselves.
You'll know more mechanics, know more enemies, and so it's more driven by the story.
But it's still like a puzzle game, like it's a logic-based game.
With some lasers as well."
"Yeah, with some lasers.
How do you deliver the story? Are we going to meet characters, or are you going to have a narrator? How does that work?
So we decided that our design restriction is pieces don't talk, so we don't have dialogues per se.
We have some cryptic runes, we have some hints, sometimes that we need to explain controls or something like that."
"Other than that, we'll have pieces that are characters in themselves, they have their own story from the moment they fell to the moment you encounter them.
And you will have a story that is, in a sense, a clash between ideologies of white pieces that want to ascend the board and see chess rules as something sacred, and the black pieces that see chess as a prison and want to remain beyond the board."
"It's kind of this conflict between two factions, and the way we tell this narrative is mostly through visuals.
Everything is very symbolic, and you kind of piece it together like a puzzle.
You put the pieces together, both the story and literally the chess.
That's a big thing for us, in designing the game in general, we won't tell you anything, literally."
"I think the only thing we'll tell you is the controls, but other than that, you gotta figure it out.
With this sort of cryptic approach to it, what is the feedback you're getting from players trying it out today?
I think people kind of figure it out in general by themselves and are intrigued.
We even have the game played by small children, younger than 10 years old, and then they could figure it out."
"Sometimes even faster than adults, because they don't have any preconceived idea of what things are.
They just kind of engage with things like a child does, and they figure it out for themselves.
What else can you tell me about your background?
If this is your first game, or you've worked on games before?
And also, what is the thing you're most proud of from this specific game?
I think our specific roles, I've been working with games, I'm a professor, lecturer in university."
"But this is our first commercial game.
So it's been a journey, learning how to produce a game, because technically we already had the knowledge of making stuff.
But producing is a whole new chapter in itself.
But I think the thing that we are most proud of."
"At least for me, it's the whole thing in general.
We think it's an interesting concept, and we kind of explored it and keep exploring it as much as we can.
And we think it's cool that if we weren't making that, it wouldn't exist.
Something like this wouldn't exist, and we think it should exist."
"So I think that's the things that make us most proud of it.
What's the status of the game? Can we get our hands on it already?
This demo was already released on the OTK Games Expo, and it has been for quite some months.
And the full game will take some time, probably a year or so to finish."
"Because we want to really make a good story.
Some good puzzles, some good bosses.
Bosses?
Bosses, yeah.
Okay, and do you have a publisher?
Not yet, we are understanding what fits us, mostly."
"Fantastic, looking forward to trying it out myself.
I haven't played, and good luck in tonight's awards.
Thank you.
Obrigado."
