Shotgun King (Unlocked FULL GAME)

Shotgun King hands you one black king, a royal shotgun, and a board full of white pieces that used to take your orders. Android players who keep dying around the middle floors get the turn economy and the card logic that carry a run all the way to the throne. Movement wins more boards than firepower here, and that single habit decides whether floor 12 ever appears.

How to Play Shotgun King on Android

Shotgun King is a turn-based chess roguelike in which you control a single black king carrying a shotgun against a full white army. Each turn you either move one square, fire the weapon, or reload it, and your goal on every board is killing the White King before the white pieces corner you.

The Android release arrived in 2026 from PUNKCAKE Délicieux, with Plug In Digital handling the mobile edition at roughly $6.99. That price buys the whole game. No ads interrupt a board, and no timers gate a second run.

PC players have been at this since 2022, and the Steam version currently sits at 93 percent positive from more than 3,800 reviews. Console versions followed in 2023 on Switch, PlayStation and Xbox. On phones the closest shelf-mates are Pawnbarian and Really Bad Chess, both of which take chess rules somewhere strange. Neither of them arms a piece.

What the Royal Shotgun Does on a Chess Board

The royal shotgun fires a cone of shrapnel across the 8×8 board, and anything caught inside that cone takes damage. Pieces carry different amounts of health, so a pawn folds instantly while a queen may shrug off a distant blast. Because your king still moves one square at a time, the gun is the only tool with reach.

Firing costs your whole turn. After the blast, every white piece scheduled to act moves at once, which often closes the gap you just opened. So the question on each turn is never simply “can I hit something”. The better question is where the board sits after white answers.

The Black King’s Story and the Defected White Army

The premise is petty and delightful. Your army walked out on you, joined the nicer white king, and left you holding a weapon from the royal vaults. A black bishop explains the one advantage you kept, which is dominion over the souls of your former subjects.

Pixel art and a muted palette keep the board readable on a phone screen. The tone stays dry rather than grim, and the writing treats your monarch as the villain of his own story. That framing matters mechanically too, because souls come from pieces that once served you.

How It Compares to Pawnbarian and Really Bad Chess

Pawnbarian runs on a tiny 5×5 dungeon board where cards decide how your hero moves, so the tension sits in deck sequencing. Really Bad Chess keeps the full rules of chess and scrambles which pieces each side receives. Both are single-player Android titles, and both cost far less than this one.

The difference is pressure. Those two still play out as chess positions, while this roguelike replaces capture with ballistics and gives the enemy a permanent numbers advantage. For example, no opening theory helps when six knights spawn on a single board. Players who want familiar chess with a twist tend to prefer Really Bad Chess. Players who want a puzzle box usually prefer Pawnbarian.

Android Version vs the PC and Console Version

The feature lists are not identical, and the difference is easy to verify. Google Play advertises 15 ranks of difficulty, while the Steam listing advertises 20 along with an extra raiding mode. Mobile players therefore top out five rungs earlier on the difficulty ladder.

Controls are the other split. On PC you click a target, whereas on Android you drag to aim and release to fire, which takes a few boards to feel natural. The phone build also does not reliably hold an unfinished board if you leave the app, so finishing a floor before switching away is wise. Price runs the other direction, since the mobile version costs less than most console editions.

Royal Shotgun Reload Rules and Touch Controls

Each turn gives you exactly one action: move a square, fire the weapon, or reload it. Nothing is free, and nothing stacks. That single constraint generates almost all of the tension in this roguelike.

Your gun starts a run with two shells in the chamber and five more in reserve. Shots leave you standing still, so ammo management doubles as position management. However, the reload is not only a button press. Moving while the chamber sits empty also feeds a shell back in, which turns retreat into a productive turn.

Touch input adds its own rhythm. You drag across the board to set the arc, then release to commit, and the arc shows exactly which squares the spread will cover. Learning to trust that preview instead of eyeballing angles saves a lot of wasted shells.

Move, Fire or Reload: One Action Per Turn

The turn order is strict. You act first, then the white pieces due to move all act together, which can be one piece or five depending on the board. Because they move simultaneously, a safe square can turn lethal without warning if you count only the nearest threat.

Reloading deliberately, by spending a turn on the weapon, feels wasteful at first. In practice it is often the strongest play on a quiet board. For example, a turn spent loading while the enemy queen sits four squares away costs nothing, while the same turn spent later, with a knight adjacent, costs the run.

Range Falloff and the Shell Reserve

Damage drops with distance, so the same shell that erases a bishop at two squares may only wound it at five. That falloff is the reason experienced players walk toward danger before firing. Range upgrades change the math, but early on you should treat three squares as your honest working distance.

Reserve ammo is finite within a board and refills between floors. Running the reserve to zero mid-floor is how most early losses begin, because a dry chamber turns every turn into a retreat. In my runs, most early boards resolve in around 20 to 30 turns, which is roughly the budget your shells need to cover.

Reading the Shake Before White Pieces Move

Pieces telegraph their intent. A white piece shakes on the turn before it moves, so the board tells you who is about to act if you look for the tremor. That one detail converts guesswork into planning.

Use the tremor as a targeting list. If a knight shakes and its landing square would put you in check, that knight becomes the shot, not the queen sitting harmlessly across the board. Similarly, a shaking rook on an open file matters more than a closer pawn that cannot reach you.

How to Unlock Endless Mode and Chase Mode

Finishing Throne Mode once opens endless mode, which removes the twelve floor cap and simply asks how far you can climb. Chase mode arrives the same way and swaps measured tactics for constant pressure from all sides, since fresh white pieces keep arriving while you fight.

Both modes sit behind a single requirement, which is one completed campaign at any rank. Nothing else gates them. That design keeps the unlock honest, because skill is the only key.

More than 100 achievements run in parallel with all of this, tracking odd feats rather than simple milestones. Some reward outrageous kills, others reward restraint. They give a reason to keep a strange run going even when the throne is out of reach.

Clearing Throne Mode to Open Endless Mode

Endless mode reuses the same board generator without the ending. Past the eleventh floor the white army keeps gaining random buffs, so the board eventually tips into chaos by design. Your score is simply the depth reached.

Treat it as a laboratory rather than a challenge. Because the run never ends in victory, you can test greedy black cards you would never risk in a campaign. Many players find their favourite card combinations here, then carry that knowledge back into a ranked attempt.

What Chase Mode Changes About Board Pressure

Chase mode borrows the arcade idea of endless assault. White pieces come at you from every edge, and standing still stops being an option at any point in the board. Positioning beats damage here even more than usual.

The mode also rewards a different shopping list. Range and ammo capacity matter less, while movement effects and extra lives matter far more. For example, anything that repositions your king after a hit is worth taking immediately.

Picking a Rank After Your First Clear

Ranks are the difficulty ladder, and the Android build offers 15 of them. Rank 1 is a fair fight. By the double digits the white army starts each floor with pieces you would normally only face at the end of a campaign.

Climb one rank at a time rather than jumping. Each step teaches a specific lesson, usually about which white upgrades you can no longer afford to accept. Players who skip ahead tend to lose repeatedly without working out why, since several small disadvantages arrive at once.

How to Get New Shotguns and Better Black Cards

Black cards upgrade your king and your weapon, while white cards hand an equal favour to the enemy army. After each cleared floor the game offers two pairs, each containing one of each colour, and you take a whole pair. New shotguns unlock separately, once your card choices push your stats past the thresholds a given weapon asks for.

The card pool is large. Community counts put it at 93 black cards and 93 white cards, which is why two runs rarely rhyme. Range boosts, grenades, extra soul slots, poison effects and outright extra lives all live in that pool.

One practical note about the phone version: the card screen crowds your current range and power values behind the description panel. Therefore it pays to memorise your stats before opening the choice, especially when you are chasing a specific weapon unlock.

How Black Cards and White Cards Pair Up

Every pair is a bargain, never a gift. A black card offering two extra squares of range might sit beside a white card that adds a second queen, and taking one means taking both. The alternate pair might offer less for you and less for them.

Strong players often take the weaker black card on purpose. Because floors stack their effects, a modest gift beside a harmless curse usually outperforms a brilliant gift beside a board-breaking one. The math is cumulative, not per floor.

Which Card Effects Unlock New Shotguns

Weapon unlocks track the shape of your build. Stacking range cards steers you toward long-barrel weapons, while stacking power or capacity steers you elsewhere, and the game credits the unlock once you hit the required numbers during a run. So the path to a new gun is a deliberate card diet, not luck.

Aim for one stat line per run when you are hunting unlocks. Splitting picks between range, power and utility leaves you just short of several thresholds at once. That near-miss is the most common reason players finish a campaign with nothing new in the armoury.

Reading the White Card Before the Black Card

Here is the ordering almost no article states plainly: price the white card first, then decide whether the black card pays for it. Your upgrades raise your floor, but the enemy upgrades raise the ceiling of what floors nine through twelve look like. A single extra queen compounds across four boards.

Rank the white cards by mobility rather than count. Additional pawns clutter the board and can even shield you, while additional knights and queens generate threats you cannot outrun. In my runs, accepting a second queen before floor six ended the attempt more often than any other choice.

How Floors, Ranks and Souls Progression Work

Throne Mode runs twelve floors deep, and the White King waits on the last one as a proper boss fight. Clear a floor by killing the enemy king, then choose your card pair, then descend into a board that is measurably worse than the one before.

Souls run alongside that ladder as the game’s second economy. Killing any piece except a pawn or a king leaves a soul behind, and you can carry it if a slot is free. Spending it lets your king move like that piece exactly once.

Ranks sit above everything. Finishing the campaign on one rank invites you to try the next, and the Android version tops out at 15. Each rung changes the starting board rather than the rules, which keeps the roguelike honest.

The 12 Floors of Throne Mode and the Boss

Early floors are a tutorial in disguise. Boards one through four usually contain pieces you can outrange, and your two starting shells cover most situations. From floor five onward the white army arrives with the upgrades you handed it.

Floor twelve is a set piece rather than another board. The White King defends himself properly, and any pieces you allowed to multiply earlier all show up at once. Consequently, most failed runs die on floors nine through eleven, with the boss never entering the picture.

Collecting Souls and Managing Soul Slots

You begin a run with a single soul slot, and cards expand that number. A knight soul lets you jump over a blockade, a bishop soul crosses the board diagonally, and a rook soul escapes down an open file. Each one is single use.

Slot discipline is the skill. Because a full slot blocks any new soul, killing a queen while holding a pawn-grade escape simply wastes the better piece. Spend the cheap soul first, even on a turn where you do not strictly need it, and the expensive one lands where it belongs.

What the 15 Ranks Change Each Time

Higher ranks front-load the white army. Instead of building toward danger, the board begins with knights in awkward places and more material than your opening shells can clear. Your first three turns therefore matter more than anything you do later.

The ladder also changes which cards count as good. At rank 1 a grenade is fun, whereas at rank 12 an extra life is survival. Players who keep the same shopping list at every rank stall out around the middle of the ladder and blame luck.

Common Mistakes That End Runs Before Floor 12

Two Folly Shields stand between you and a lost run on every floor. If your next move would let a piece capture your king, the game blocks it, flashes the threatening piece red, and spends a shield. Lose both and the next blunder is final.

Those shields have a blind spot worth knowing. They cannot intervene when killing a piece clears the line for another one behind it, because that move was legal when you made it. So a shot that opens a rook’s file will kill you without any red warning.

Most lost runs trace back to three habits rather than bad luck. Wasted shields, misspent turns, and clogged soul slots account for far more defeats than any single white card.

Burning Folly Shields on Avoidable Checks

Players treat shields as a safety net, which is exactly backwards. They are a warning system, and each activation means you misread the board. Two mistakes per floor is a thin budget on later boards.

Slow down on the turn after any shield triggers. The red flash tells you which piece you missed, so take the free information and re-plan rather than immediately trying another square. Advanced players also raise the shield count to three while adjusting to a new rank, then lower it once the boards feel readable again.

Firing When Movement Was the Better Turn

New players shoot almost every turn, since the gun feels like the point of the game. The board disagrees. Standing still to fire hands white a free turn of repositioning, and against multiple movers that trade rarely favours you.

Ask whether the shot removes a threat or merely removes a piece. Killing a distant pawn while a knight closes in is a wasted action with a cost attached. By contrast, a step sideways that breaks two lines of attack at once often wins the board outright.

Filling Every Soul Slot Before a Queen Dies

The most expensive mistake is invisible while you make it. You hold a bishop soul, you line up the queen, and the kill lands with nowhere for her soul to go. That queen soul was a free diagonal escape across the entire board.

Build the emptying habit into your routine. Before any shot that might finish a major piece, spend whatever you are holding, even on a modest repositioning move. Nine times out of ten the traded soul costs nothing, and the tenth time it saves a run.

Best Shotgun King Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Movement wins more boards than firepower in this roguelike, and the numbers back that up. Your king clears one square per turn while the white army often moves several pieces at once, so every position you take must answer more than one threat.

The tips below draw on the systems this game runs on: the shell reserve, the soul economy, and the card pool. Each one addresses a failure point rather than a preference. Expect roughly three hours of play before a first campaign clear, including the losses that teach the patterns.

Nothing here requires chess study. Knowing how each piece moves is enough, since openings and endgames simply do not apply once a shotgun enters the position.

Reload Before the Chamber Runs Dry

Reload on quiet turns, not desperate ones. With two shells in the chamber and five in reserve at the start, you have enough ammunition for an opening board, but only if you refill during the gaps. Firing until empty guarantees that your next three turns are retreats.

Remember that moving while the chamber is empty also loads a shell. Therefore a walk toward better ground doubles as a reload, which is the most efficient turn in the game. Use it whenever a board opens up.

Trade Board Space for Queen Souls

Queens are the best souls in the game and the worst threats on the board. Getting close enough to kill one means accepting risk, though the payoff is a piece of movement that can cross the entire board in one turn. That trade is almost always correct on floors six and later.

Set it up rather than improvising. Empty your slot, count which pieces move next, and take the shot from a square that stays legal after white answers. Players who wait for a safe queen kill usually never get one.

Stack Black Mist Against the Late Floors

Black Mist is the card that changes outcomes. Each copy grants an extra life on every floor, saving you from checkmate and teleporting your king to a nearby square instead. Multiple copies stack, which is why experienced players take it over almost anything else.

Play the teleport as an opportunity, not a reprieve. You arrive somewhere unexpected with your souls intact, so the turn after a Black Mist activation is often the best attacking turn of the board. Nevertheless, treat each copy as one mistake you are allowed to make, and no more.

Frequently Asked Questions About Shotgun King

Is Shotgun King available on Android?

Yes. Shotgun King reached Google Play in 2026, several years after its PC debut, with Plug In Digital handling the mobile edition at roughly $6.99. That single purchase covers everything, since the game carries no ads and no in-app purchases. An iOS build launched at the same time.

How long does one run take?

Most runs finish in about twenty minutes, and a single board rarely passes thirty turns. The pace suits short sessions on a phone. However, the mobile build does not reliably hold an unfinished board when you leave the app, so closing out a floor before switching away is the safer habit.

Is there anything to do after the final floor?

Plenty. The first campaign clear opens two extra modes, and the fifteen rung difficulty ladder keeps resetting the challenge above them. More than 100 achievements track strange feats, including reloading without moving and surviving four simultaneous threats. Everything is single player, with no online play and no daily timers.

Who Should Buy Shotgun King on Android

Buy this one if you like tight tactical decisions and short sessions, and if losing a run teaches you something rather than annoying you. Casual chess players will find it fair, because piece movement is the only knowledge it asks for. I have lost more runs to impatience than to bad card draws, and the moment I started spending turns on movement instead of shots, my clear rate roughly doubled. Skip it if you want a relaxed board game, since the pressure never really lets up. At its price, this is one of the sharpest tactical purchases on Android.