Below the Crown

Below the Crown mixes roguelikes, dungeon crawlers and chess. You command a small army of pieces such as knights, rooks and archers, each with its own movement rules and skills, and play cards from a battle deck to move, attack and cast spells on grid boards. Between floors you buy upgrades, pick up runes and answer odd psychological questions about how you feel toward your pieces, which change how the run unfolds.

The game comes from Misfits Attic, the studio that made Duskers and A Virus Named TOM. A demo with the Daily and Player Challenges came out on Steam in October 2025, an early access build followed, and version 1.0 arrived on 21 April 2026, published with Shochiku. Updates kept coming after launch, with new music, a Linux memory fix and a run of bug fix and quality of life patches through August 2026.

The Daily Challenge gives everyone the same dungeon for the day. The developers have patched it so the daily plays out the same across game builds, and removed some pieces and skills from it to keep it stable. Finished runs are compared with the community. You can watch replays of top players to see how they handled the same boards, and players can also post their own victories as challenges for others.

It suits players who like tactical puzzles with chess-like movement, short competitive runs and learning from other people's solutions.

The game is paid, sold on Steam for Windows, and the developers report it as Steam Deck Verified. It is in English for now; Japanese and Chinese versions were announced as under way in April 2026.