Throughout Chessnomancy's development period, I was the sole encounter designer for the game, creating a total of 51 unique encounters
Early into development, however, the game didn't have encounter variants because the opponent was also supposed to summon their own units. This feature was cut early into development however to minimize visual noise and chaos, only reappearing near the end of development for the final boss. However, this had the unintended effect of making the game too simple and easy.
Around the time when the core systems of the game were finalized, one of our programmers was able to create a Level Editor which allowed me to expiriment with various encounter variations.
Initial encounters that were created with the editor were designed akin to the simpler style to give players a "safe" space to expiriment.
However, encounters created later into development slowly grew in complexity, created akin to how chess puzzles are made.
Additionally, in later encounters, the enemy is buffed through enchanted pieces to allow balancing without flooding the board.
Compared to earlier encounters, the later encounters were designed to limit player actions to give them more opportunities to utilize their spells & enchantments. While designing these encounters, I ensured that each encounter felt distinct from each other, didn't overwhelm the player, and had a core theme. Pieces were also placed strategically in the really late encounters to force more interesting board interactions and thus more engaging moments.
This game also expiriments with various different boss fights.
Originally, the bosses were planned to be their own things entirely and have a unique gimmick per fight.
However, that was quickly scrapped.
Instead, with one exception, the game will give the enemy's king a different movement pattern, have more than one king to capture, or both.
Because of this, Elite and Boss encounters were designed to account for this more challenging win condition by allowing more places to hide.
While enchanted units are given a glow effect, Elite units are given their own golden effect to differentiate them since they replace the King piece.
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