Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance

About this game

Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance is the much anticipated sequel to Shinogi Chess Club, a hybrid-genre experience that combines visual novel storytelling with 3D exploration and a playable strategy game! Challenge dangerous opponents, uncover the origin of Himiko's dark secret, and confront new threats as the leader of the Shinogi Chess Club!



In the wake of the Typhoon Initiative's collapse, a new threat has risen to challenge the city's obsession with Shinogi Chess, a board game variant which has taken hold of countless schools across Japan. With the Spring Championships behind her, Himiko Masaki continues the search for her mother, and will stop at nothing to acquire power in pursuit of this goal. As she investigates new leads and unravels a sinister conspiracy, Himiko is driven down a path of vengeance, and discovers just how far she's willing to go for the truth.



Meanwhile, Yoshino High School has finally recovered from last semester's shocking events. The Shinogi Chess Club struggles to stay afloat when new arrivals, including aspiring poet Kenshi Okawa, shake the group to their core. As Himiko learns more about the other members, such as Kaito Sakuma, a brilliant student with suspicious connections, she realizes that more lies beneath the surface when it comes to her friends. Amidst these complications, rival clubs at Yoshino High have also caught wind of Himiko's activities, and seek involvement for the safety of the school.



Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance continues RobProductions' unique visual novel hybrid style, allowing the player to freely investigate 3D levels in third person. Experience the thrilling drama revolving around Himiko's journey and engage in strategic duels that will test your skill in Shinogi Chess!

• Witness the truth of Himiko's past as she searches for her mother, Yuko Masaki
  
• Investigate new locations inside and outside of Yoshino High School to discover leads
  
• Challenge skilled new opponents in Shinogi Chess, each with unique strategies and personalities

This world revolves around Shinogi Chess, a brand new chess variant that requires its players to develop unique strategies if they wish to climb the ranks. The objective of Shinogi Chess is simple: capture the opponent's King and control a majority of Towers on the board. In order to complete these tasks, you must carefully position your pieces and strike when the time is right. In Shinogi Chess Club 2, changes to the original game, such as board layout variants, will require you to think on your toes and adapt to any situation placed before you.



Each opponent that stands in your way will employ different strategies to counteract your advance, and it's up to you to learn their tricks and personalities in order to the discover the best way to take them down. Utilize piece stacking and hidden pieces to outmaneuver the enemy, and take advantage of special moves which add another layer of strategy to the game.

In Shinogi Chess Club 2, improved selection UI and controls have streamlined the game to help you avoid common pitfalls. Himiko's Power also makes a full return as the ultimate advantage, and could turn the tide against the most challenging opponents. The fate of Japan may very well rest in your hands, so make every move count.

• Experience the next chapter of Himiko's journey and uncover the truth of her troubled past
  
• Lead the Shinogi Chess Club to victory as new arrivals threaten to tear the group apart
  
• Battle a variety of opponents in fully playable Shinogi Chess segments
  
• Explore new & familiar locations in 3rd person investigations
  
• Test your skills & play custom battles in the flexible Practice Mode
  
• Adjust the difficulty to your liking for more or less of a challenge
  
• Use the new Skip Match feature to bypass tough matches entirely
  
• Play Shinogi Chess with your friends in local multiplayer via the Practice Mode
  
• Improved interface, animation quality, and camera controls
  
• 4k screen support & compatible with any framerate
  
• Native versions for macOS, Windows, and Linux
  
• Support for common input hardware, including the Xbox & DualShock controllers
  
• Complete subtitle support and other common accessibility features
  
• Full original soundtrack & album release

Latest news

• Patch Notes·3 Apr 2025Official

  Update 1.2.0 - Shinogi Chess Club 2

  The latest patch for Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance has been released! This is a batched update that includes some fixes I've been meaning to make for a while, so let's take a look at the changelog: Update Details Patch Notes: Version 1.2.0 Added missing phrases from several dialogues Fixed level collision in the Gym Added new level escape scene in the Gym Fixed some inverted character outlines on OpenGL Platforms (Linux and Steam Deck) As several people have discovered, there were some lines in the game that ended up being cut off without completing the sentence properly. This was actually a consequence of order in which I write the story, which can be quite jumbled compared to the average human being. That means a few moments were basically skipped over and never actually written, so funny! Don't worry, I've finally finished writing the game now, so there shouldn't be any more incidents like that, haha... unless? Streamer LucientSoul discovered that there was a collision gap behind the bleachers in the Gym level, thinking it was an intentional level escape. But actually, this was a legitimate unintended bug! Congratulations for finding it! As a reward, I've kept the collision gap but added a small scene when someone does find it which I hope you'll all enjoy. Please check it out in Chapter 3 and let me know what you think! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44518574/5befbd0dcd35cd49c8ddf92684dfedbb6514dad6.png Finally, thanks to a report on the Discord server, I was able to narrow down and solve a problem with character outlines on Linux and Steam Deck platforms. The issue stemmed from a flaw in the toon shader package I use, which I've documented here if anyone is curious, and I've come up with a fix that I applied to a local version of the package. Now the shaders should be fixed when running the game in OpenGL mode, and that means Steam Deck users can rest easy knowing that their outline widths are perfectly calculated. Keep in mind that you can get both Shinogi Chess Club g...
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• Announcements·22 Jun 2024Official

  The Burden of Proof Saga Continues!

  After 6 long years, it's finally time to return to the Burden of Proof storyline with a brand new game to be released next year! Though Shinogi Chess Club has been an awesome series to develop, it's time to go back to its roots and further this intertwined world from the original perspective. This new title will showcase all of the improvements I've made as a developer with completely new music, artwork, environment and character modeling, and an exciting story that follows up on threads left behind from Burden of Proof. All new cases and courtroom antics await in... Burden of Truth! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33157772/de23d4bd0ff930f92620428db01380ff8eb67bae.png Before we get any further, the game already has a "Coming Soon" page on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2923050/Burden_of_Truth/ The best way that you can support this new project is to tell your friends and give the game a wishlist so you can be notified as updates happen. It really does help out a ton and ensures that I can release the project in confidence so I truly appreciate it :D Now, on to the fun stuff... What is this?! Burden of Truth is a new game that expands on the missing Chapter 3 from the original title in order to flesh out Conrad Cross' transition between a steadfast prosecutor and a legendary defense attorney. This is content that I have alluded to in the past, but now it's finally time to realize it and fill in the gaps I meant to showcase back in 2018. But if we're seeing a story that takes place between that 2-year time skip from Burden of Proof, what more is there to learn? Without spoiling too much, a lot. Since the original Chapter 3 was so vague, it opened up a lot of room for new details and situations to unfold that allow Cross' character to undergo a much more gradual change to the person we see at the end of the game. After a crucial introductory sequence to get reacquainted with the gameplay, this new "Chapter 3" will be comprised of multiple different cases all tying in to ...
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• Patch Notes·10 Apr 2024Official

  Update 1.1.0 - Shinogi Chess Club 2

  The latest patch for Shinogi Chess Club 2 has arrived, and it includes a few crucial bugfixes as well as some exciting new settings! Let's take a look: Update Details Patch Notes: Version 1.1.0 Fixed NaN pixel flickering across all scenes Changed Antialiasing setting default to 2X Renamed Antialiasing setting to Multisample AA Added Subpixel Morphological AA setting Added Render Scale setting Added FSR 1.0 support via Upscaling setting Tweaked Tomiko's hair physics The big fix for this update is addressing the problem of flickering light errors which mainly occurred in the Shinogi Chess Club Room. I'm not exactly sure which shader is the culprit but this seemed to stem from NaN (Not a Number) errors that became visible on screen. NaN pixel values work incorrectly with the Bloom effect that is used extensively in the Shinogi Chess Club post processing stack, causing the intensity to cascade out and create an ugly blob on the screen. This is mitigated in Unity by enabling an option to replace NaN pixels with a clamped color, stopping these errors from effecting bloom. The downside is a minor hit to performance but I believe the impact should be minimal. And, with the new options added in this update, you'll be able to balance it out by squeezing out better performance for the same level of quality. Speaking of which... Previously, Shinogi Chess Club 2 relied on both Multisample Antialiasing (MSAA) and Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing (SMAA) for cleaning up jagged edges. MSAA provides a really clean result but can cost a lot of performance due to how it gathers the necessary pixel information. Due to me mixing up the two methods in my head (they've got really similar acronyms, oops), I gave the user control over MSAA thinking it would be the only AA applied to the screen. I naively set the default to 4x sample and believed it was actually affecting SMAA. That was a bit of a mistake. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44518574/922b3c1cab616ba7706169b47733dc6f480b36d3.jpg Now, the op...
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• Patch Notes·7 Feb 2024Official

  Update 1.0.3 - Shinogi Chess Club 2

  The latest update for Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance is here! Let's go over the details: Update Details Patch Notes (1.0.3) Fixed Exit button not appearing on completed scenes This is a pretty simple fix for a bug that seems to have been introduced by accident during the construction of a previous patch, so I apologize for the inconvenience! What happened was that a game object present in the UI for one of my core objects was disabled, probably for debugging purposes. After enabling it, the UI system was able to function correctly again. Additionally, I added a cap to the number of times an "interactable object" can track your progress through its scripts. This should eliminate the number reaching absurd heights in extreme situations and clarify the state of the object when I'm debugging the "exit script" functionality. Community Highlight I highly recommend checking out Visual Novelty's new series covering the game on YouTube! I had a blast watching so best of luck with the rest of your playthrough, and thanks for trying it out! I also want to highlight streamer VernonCrowe who is currently annihilating Shinogi Chess Club 2 AI opponents with his incredible gaming skill! Thank you for playing through the series! That's all for now, so again I highly appreciate the support everyone has provided and I hope to update you all soon on the exciting stuff I've been working on! As always, you can follow me on Twitter @RobProductions for the latest updates. Thanks for playing! - Matt
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• Patch Notes·21 Jan 2024Official

  Update 1.0.2 - Shinogi Chess Club 2

  We're a few months after the initial release now and I want to personally thank everyone that supported Shinogi Chess Club 2: Resistance and tried it out! In this post I'll talk about a new patch to the game and some upcoming content to look out for. Without further delay, let's take a look at the latest update to the game which was just uploaded today: Update Details Patch Notes (1.0.2) Fixed rendering bounds for several characters Fixed helmet culling issue in the intro cutscene Crashed a car into the Investigation Club Room (out of bounds) The fixes here are pretty simple as they mainly related to rendering issues that you'd barely notice unless you were looking for it. During the intro cutscene, a helmet prefab had its LOD settings set a bit too generously when it comes to culling the mesh completely, which becomes an issue when you adjust the graphics lower with the in-game settings. Since you can adjust the LOD bias, it means objects can use lower-detailed versions of themselves at closer distances, and this even extends to the "completely culled" state. I didn't catch this originally because I test too often on the higher settings. A similar system culls out skinned meshes (i.e. rigged characters) when they are not on screen; the problem is that the bounds used for this calculation are based on best-guess since rigged characters can technically have parts of themselves far away from the origin. In Unity, the solution is to update those bounds every frame to account for the animation using a special flag, and I had missed setting it for a few clothing items on characters; mainly for hair and bows, etc. This is kind of hard to spot but it meant that in extreme situations with certain camera angles, the clothing items would be culled. In version 1.0.2 this is now corrected, and it's always possible that I missed a few more of these but in a game with so many static front-facing angles it's not often that it actually causes an issue. Finally, I did indeed crash a...
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