Checkmate or Die 9+

I really love the idea behind this game. It started off really fun, and I like how the levels were initially easy and then grew in difficulty, that makes total sense.
However, I am on level 30 now, and the zombies are eating my character before I even look at the whole board, much less take the time to make three moves on the board for a check mate.
More time to look at the board would be nice, especially on later levels. You could balance the difficulty by having the zombies speed up on a wrong move. Losing a level when I know the answer but don’t have time to move the pieces is very frustrating.

Some thoughts from playing the first 16 or so levels:

1. The animations seem to take too long. This applies to both the pieces moving and the guy running. The guy running has a “galumph galumph” energy.
2. The guy running slow is especially annoying when you complete a bunch of levels in a row and then you have to watch him slowly run up the level ladder.
3. The difficulty/pacing seem a little off. I think it’s obviously smart to start with simple mates. But I think it would be better if the chasing was more forgiving but the levels were longer. Right now it feels like you can’t think at all, which I don’t think lends itself well to later levels where thinking for 5 seconds would be fast-paced but still rewarding.
4. I think the game could use a mode where the timing is more forgiving but the zombies speed up or cover ground when you input a wrong solution. That would allow harder puzzles to feel actually achievable.

I love the concept of this game. It puts an interesting twist on chess puzzles by making them more engaging. I honestly was having a lot of fun playing this game during the early stages. It is once I get to around level 30 when I am solving mates in 3. There really is not enough time to analyze the position. There are just so many things that need calculated in such little time that is not very fun anymore. What I would is give players the opportunity to click an analyze button on screen when you start the level and then you can calculate the mate. Which also pause the zombies to make it fair.