Hello there! This is Stealthmate, a puzzle game my brother, sister, and I have been working on.

The objective. Instead of checkmating another king, you're trying to navigate through the board, avoid enemy attack ranges, and reach the exit.

This short video explains the basic puzzle mechanic and shows a few examples of how we use the different pieces.

As the levels progress, we start combining different pieces, obstacles, enemies and objectives, but we try to keep the chess movement itself recognizable.

I'm curious what people who actually play chess variants think of using the movement rules this way.

This variant plays on the idea of a pre-move and introduces moments into a traditional chess game where you dont know what your opponent's last move was, and you need to play according to your best guess.

All the existing chess mechanics are in place. The difference comes on move 5. Black's 4th move is hidden and the White player must select their 5th move before seeing what Black has played. On move 10, White's play is hidden from Black, who now has to make the guess. This pattern alternates every 5th move.

Illegal moves are rejected so you can try a move and if it is not legal, you get another attempt.

The strategy changes now because every 5th move a big advantage could be gained, or a risk could be taken. Imagine your rooks were forked by a knight, but your opponent doesn't get to see which one you move.

The game development is very early stages and I am mainly seeking feedback on the concept before investing into a 2-player set up.

Use this link to play a single player version against a 2000 rated engine. The 'guess' for the engine is a bit basic, but enough to give the idea of game play.

Link

Hello! I'm new here!
I recently became an enthusiast of Chess and since I'm on a game design course, I figured: hey what if I made my own version of Chess?
So, I took some phantasy inspirations, threw several changes in rules and came up with this game I call Sword & Faith Tactics.
It's on my itch.io => https://joaocllira.itch.io/sword-faith-tactics
But the new rules are succinct enough so that I can post it here:
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Pawn: movement and characteristics kept. In addition, if two or more pawns are adjacent on any direction, if one of them is killed, you can choose to have one of the others be killed instead. This is to represent the strength of troops.

Knight: movement pattern kept. But if there are any pawns on the path of its movement, all of them are killed, not only the one on the final square.

Bishop: white squares and black squares bishops have different abilities. A white bishop can use holy magic to resurrect any dead piece you have that is of the same type of the piece the bishop is killing. The healed piece is positioned on its starting place or the nearest empty square of your choice. A black bishop can use necromancy to bring back any dead piece, but it must have a value lower than the piece killed. A pawn killed can’t be used for to trigger this ability. If a bishop is attacked but is adjacent to a friendly pawn on a same color square, instead of being killed, the bishop can swap places with the pawn, and the pawn is killed instead.

Rook: knights can’t jump over rooks. If it tries, it stays on the immediate previous square before touching the rook. In addition, if a king is adjacent to a rook, it can teleport to any square around the rook, as long as it’s empty.

Queen: the queen loses its wide movement. Now it moves like a typical king. But in addition, a queen can teleport to the side of any allied piece in the game, on any direction and be placed adjacent to it. It can’t kill any piece immediately while doing it, tough. This represents the spy aspect of females on wars.

King: the white king is now the strategist king. He can sacrifice a piece to give its movement pattern to another piece for one turn, including special movements like en passant or castle, but not special abilities like the queen’s teleportation. The black king is the warrior king. When a friendly piece kills an enemy piece, the black king can sacrifice a piece of his own of the same value of the killed piece to kill another enemy piece that is adjacent to the first piece that was killed. This ability can be used against the opposing king.

In this game, the king must be killed. Checkmates are not enough.
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Grok said it was very unbalanced. But it was kinda the point. I was aiming for some crazy games, where unexpected plays were really common. Also the resurrection mechanic fuels the abilities of the kings which makes the bishops essential and it really opens up how to hunt the enemy king.

And that's it. I'd appreciate some good intended commentaries! And please, if anyone wants to try it out, I'd be thrilled.
Thanks!

EDIT: Made the black king ability text clearer