A strange little side quest
There is a neat bit of history hiding behind the kind of play you find in Protect the Gifts. The word 'checkmate' is linked to the Persian expression 'shah mat', used when the king was trapped. That old idea kept changing rather than disappearing. Pac-Man went on sale in 1980, and its creator Toru Iwatani famously linked the character's shape to a pizza with a slice missing. That gives Protect the Gifts a little more company than it first appears to have.