Shogi is the Dark Souls of Board Games
Wait, wait, wait, hear me out. I know that something being "The Dark Souls of XYZ" is literally the Citizen Kane of dead memes, but I'm serious about this. Cerebral, strategic, agonizing and incredibly gratifying to learn; Shogi is the Dark Souls of Board Games and I will die on this hill.
Before we get into what the hell I mean about this; two pieces of background:
詰将棋 - TSUME SHOGI
One of the many white whales I've been chasing when making tabletop games is the idea of "Can a turn based game capture the tension and tactics of a skill-based real-time game?" Chess may not be a solved game but it's never felt tense whenever I play it, there's always the optimal move and either I'm too foolish to see it or I do and the game proceeds in my favor. It's puzzley and enjoyable, but there's no pressure, no fear. The learning curve is pretty painless and usually you can tell pretty fast if you're outclassed by an opponent.
Similarly a lot of tabletop combat (especially in the Tactical RPG sector) never quite feels tense. It's a reason I prioritized feel over challenge in Steel Hearts (and also why I axed healing as a mechanic), the tension is more about winding up for a giga-nuke hit in time, rather than the raw mastery one needs to acquire in a Soulslike. It's breezy but in a fun stylish-action way! It's similarly a reason Gubat Banwa's focus on style is appealing to me. Yes both games can be enjoyably tactical puzzles, even difficult, but the tension has always felt not-quite-there, and even when the difficulty feels just right, it's usually because the GM fine tuned an encounter for their specific play group (a tough thing to meaningfully hand off).
One of the tenser board games I've played this year, the head-to-head Exceed has that good nail-biting feel. Games are close and moves are often about wisely predicting your opponent... but also that tension is tied closer to chance and luck of the draw. It's the same tension in Poker where a skilled player will often still come out on top, but skill alone isn't what defines the game.
Which brings us to Dark Souls. In Dark Souls player skill is the end-all-be-all, as demonstrated by no-hit runs, the Git Gud meme, and all kinds of other silliness you've likely seen on YouTube. It's a fine honed difficulty and dance that its successors like Nioh and Elden Ring never quite nailed in the same way. It's a game where every failure not only feels earned, but often teaches you more of the game. Anyone who has played through a Souls game once will find their second run infinitely smoother regardless of the build they play. This is because they as a player improved, not just their character, their equipment or their build. Levels and weapons pail in comparison to the raw skill accumulation.
Which of course brings us to tabletop games and RPGs. Can you capture that same raw tension, difficulty and learning curve in a turn based game? Frankly, I'd all but given up,. I'd nearly accepted that I'd probably tasted whatever could get the closest, and working towards anything else may be a fool's errand. I was wrong.
棋譜 - KIFU
In September of 2023 I began Yakuza 7 - Like a Dragon (I'll be writing more about that game eventually). Its cast is well written, its world charming, its combat serviceable and flashy. However about 4 hours into the game I came upon a notoriously difficult minigame that I'd somehow avoided any exposure to: Shogi. Eager to learn new games and maybe earn some extra items, I hopped in at around 11 p.m.
I then proceeded to spend the next 6 hours doing my best to beat the easiest computer the game had, gaining not even a single win. Countless hours and a newfound insomnia later and I still haven't gotten a single proper Checkmate against the computer. Yet something about the game was simply electric.
Today I decided to play against an actual human being and the results were absolutely magical. The game was tense and frustrating and uproarious and challenging. I felt my heart clenched with every move. Raw tension whenever a piece fell into my enemy's possession. Each mistake taught me something new. Each capture felt like an improvement. I was wrestling with the game itself as much as with my opponent. Every moment was filled with intoxicating dread.
After months I won my first proper game of Shogi. And then it clicked: That tension, that raw panic that gets the brain juices flowing and the heart pounding, that adrenaline that had hooked me on shooters and fighting games and of course Dark Souls, I was finally feeling it for the first time in a completely turn-based environment. The puzzle had been cracked nearly a millennia ago. So the question obviously became:
How can I replicate this feeling in a different game?
捌き - SABAKI
I'm not going to claim I'm any kind of Shogi expert here. Especially with only a little under two months of experience, and especially when I've only won one very close game against an (albeit quite good) first time player. But there's some elements of it that really tickle my brain that felt worth stewing on. I don't have any particular conclusions today, but maybe this bullet list can help or inspire later down the line:
- Every victory and loss has nuance. In Chess a trade is a trade. If you trade your Pawn for their Queen, that trade is good! If you trade your Rook for their Knight, maybe not as great. Many RPGs and tactics games are the same way. I trade a little damage to my Knight now to be in a position to deal more damage to the Dragon later. Good trade. I lost my marine squadron and only took out two Termagaunts. Bad trade. Shogi is... not so simple. In Shogi every piece your opponent takes is one they can now parachute anywhere on the board, and I really mean almost anywhere. My checkmate today was only possible because of Parachuting and the Checks I'd had to run from beforehand were the same way. In Shogi every loss is ammo for your opponent. Every trade can come back to bite you later in exciting and surprising ways. Conversely you might trade one of your really good pieces for a middling piece they have that you really need right now. It's a wild level of nuance I've simply never experienced in a game before and it's one of Shogi's biggest strengths.
- Every piece evolves as the game progresses. In most games pieces are relatively static once a given skirmish begins. Sure your Knight levels up between matches, or your warband grows new Turnips, but in Shogi? You better believe your pieces can and will level-up on the field, mid-battle. This means you not only have to keep track of your opponents pieces, and the pieces they drop, but also the pieces those pieces can all digivolve into. If you think the whole "Pawn turns into Queen if it gets to the other end of the board" thing is neat in Chess, this is that on crack. And this is without touching all the wild piece variety happening in Dai Shogi.
- The board is nuanced. OK, OK, Wargames have had terrain figured out for a while, but trust me when I say the Promotion Zone simply hits different. At the opposite end of the board, in the back 3 rows of enemy territory lies the Promotion Zone. This is where you need to get pieces to in order to digivolve them (and simply parachuting them in won't proc the Promotion). Having nuanced pieces that engage with the board in nuanced ways (besides "-1 Movement" or "+1 Aim") feels like incredibly fertile territory. It reminds me of how cool Elemental Terrain in Tactics Ogre sounds.
- The game is simple to learn. For all this wild nuance, the game is deceptively simple to learn. I was effectively able to teach someone within the span of 4 minutes and the greatest barrier to entry was learning the Kanji for all the pieces. In essence: A nuanced system need not be complex to learn, only complex to master. A pretty classic truism, but one that is excellently on display here.
- The game is transparent. Every mistake you make, every wild play your opponent throws at you, it's all right in front of you begging to be solved. Part of the joy of having all these bells and whistles is that in the heat of the moment you will miss things. Even pro players do from what I'm told. But you can see everything, it is all technically predictable. But it's all so nuanced that it doesn't feel predictable, but it still feels intensely fair.
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