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- Israeli Indie #9 - Once A Pawn A King
Israeli Indie #9 - Once A Pawn A King
A small team of six at CloverBite in Haifa created Once a Pawn a King, a turn-based strategy inspired by chess and built as a roguelike adventure. Along the way, they had the rare chance to watch their hero play the game and give valuable insights. Now, just days after its PC release on Steam, they are looking back on their journey and offering a glimpse of what is to come.
The various teams at Clover Bite in Haifa are working on seven games at once, including the much-anticipated sequel to their 2021 hit Grime. Among them is Team Perrenormal, the six-person group behind Once a Pawn a King. All of its members are graduates of Tiltan, the School of Design and Visual Communication in Haifa, and some even began working at the studio while studying. |  The Team Behind “Once a Pawn a King” |
One of them is Netta Veksler. She joined Clover Bite in her first year at Tiltan, working on different projects while completing her degree, and continued at the studio after graduating. In her third year, she pitched Once a Pawn a King during an internal “pitch a game” day. That idea grew into a 20-month journey to build a roguelike turn-based strategy where your party is made of chess pieces. Netta has carried much of the load as narrative designer, game designer, and even as an artist. For all that, her teammates call her the “Queen of the game.”
Another key member is Alon Souter, the team’s lead developer. He has been part of Clover Bite for six years, working across different teams before helping form Team Perrenormal. A keen gamer with experience that stretches back to his high school coding days, Alon brings the technical backbone to the project. Beyond writing code, he has played a central role in shaping the game’s systems and mentoring others on the team. When he helped form the team, he never would have thought his hero, BioShock creator Ken Levine, would play their game and offer feedback.
We met with Netta and Alon less than 24 hours after they released Once a Pawn a King in Early Access on Steam, for a deep conversation about their journey.
“We kept the movement from Chess, and changed everything else”
Combining Rogue-like, Strategy and Chess
The unusual combination, roguelike strategy and Chess, came from Netta. “This idea started as one of my final project pitches at Tiltan, but eventually we went with a different idea” she explains. “I wasn’t a Chess player, I think I played once before this idea came up, but some of my friends got into Chess and the way they talked about it was so full of drama and excitement, I wanted to experiment with that energy.”