The playable characters in Chessplosion aren’t actually given a name anywhere in the game itself, but I call them chess ducks. But why do they look like that? Why are they ducks? They changed a lot over the course of the game’s development, so I’ll start at the beginning.

Chess rectangles

In Chessplosion’s original prototype, the characters were just a rounded rectangle with another rounded rectangle for a nose, and two thin legs. I wasn’t sure what the characters would look like in the full game but I knew they would be very small on the screen, so I wanted them to have low detail and a way of easily seeing which way they were facing.

You originally had to look at the HUD to see which chess piece you were holding, which quickly became annoying. So I just pasted the current chess piece on top of the character’s head.

Chess cylinders

When it was time to redraw the characters for the full game, I decided I wanted to keep the general design but with a rounded body and some arms that let them hold the chess pieces above their heads. I figured that penguin wings would be a cute way to do arms but I was still thinking of the characters as blobs with noses, not birds with beaks. A bit like Diglett from Pokemon, or the characters from Fall Guys or Among Us.

Chess ducks!

Over the next few months, I gradually started thinking of the characters as ducks or birds, even though the sprite hadn’t changed in any way. I mentioned this to NomnomNami when I hired her to draw the game’s promo art, and she gave them some little pointy duck/penguin tails that completely transformed how I thought about them. Thanks Nami!

I went back and gave the sprites some tiny tails to match the promo art, leaving us with the final version of the chess ducks. Honestly I think they’re kind of halfway between a duck and a penguin in terms of design; their flappy wings and short beaks and upright stature are more penguin-like, but their thin legs and their variety of color schemes are a bit closer to ducks or other birds. But “chess ducks” rolls off the tongue more than “chess penguins”, so that’s what they are.

Will chess ducks be in any other games?

I’m not sure. My next prototype is about a character who can fly around at high speeds, and I’m still trying to work out what it should look like. One of the options I’m considering is a chess duck using a jetpack or a helicopter propeller to fly quickly, because it sounds cute.

This has caused me to have to think about chess ducks more, in an attempt to iron out their lore. Would they still be called chess ducks if they were in a completely different game where they’re no longer holding chess pieces or doing anything else related to chess? Yes, for now at least. Where did the chess ducks even get all of those exploding chess pieces for playing Chessplosion in the first place? Unfortunately I don’t have time to answer any more questions, sorry!