Hi everyone, I'm Patrick. I'm a chess fan who's been building a time-travel variant called Chess: Time Wars, and I'd love feedback from people who enjoy pulling apart unusual chess rules.

The core idea is that a piece's movement can extend through time as well as space. When you send a piece forward, it leaves the board and returns on its scheduled turn and square, capturing an opposing piece there if one is present. You can inspect your own scheduled arrivals; your opponent can't see them.

There are three rulesets:

• Forward Time: future travel only. Set up delayed threats without rewriting earlier positions.
• Causal Collapse: travel into the past, making that earlier position the new present and discarding the future that followed it.
• Alternate Realities: past travel creates another playable reality while the original continues without the departing piece. Classic ends with checkmate on any board.

Alternate Realities also has optional Infinity: checkmated boards lock and score for their winner, and capturing the traveler that founded a branch destroys that branch. The match continues until all realities are resolved; most checkmates wins, with the final checkmate breaking a tie.

King safety still matters: kings cannot time travel, and neither side may initiate time travel while in check. Previously scheduled arrivals continue. Castling, en passant and promotion are included. There's a charge setting to make travel a resource, or unlimited travel for a more chaotic game.

What I'd like to learn:

• Do future arrivals create interesting threats and counterplay?
• Does charging improve the balance compared with unlimited travel?
• Does branching add strategy or just bookkeeping?
• What bugs can you find? Incorrect moves, arrivals, king-safety decisions, crashes or lost saves are all useful reports. Please include the steps, phone model and Android version when possible.

I'm especially looking for volunteers willing to opt in to the upcoming two-week closed beta, stay opted in throughout, play a few games and report bugs. The current private internal build is available first; I'll send the separate closed-beta opt-in instructions when that test opens.

Website and gameplay videos: Chess: Time Wars

I'm recruiting Android players for a free private Google Play beta. The current Android build is offline versus the computer, with tutorials and all rules available; there are no ads or purchases, and live multiplayer isn't included yet. Email [supportchesstimewars@gmail.com](mailto:supportchesstimewars@gmail.com) with Android beta in the subject and your Google Play account email if you'd like access. I'll send the official installation steps; please don't post your account email publicly.

Rules questions and criticism are welcome even if you don't have an Android.

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 version is designed to keep the core of chess but to add a bit of panic, political warfare, subterfuge and fatigue. in practice the games almost always act exactly like chess but with more recklessness and a faster pace.

the biggest change you will normally see is that you can loose by going 4 rounds without either moving a pawn or taking one of your opponents pieces. this is called a personal loss by fatigue, which is designed to mimic the consequences of drawn out warfare both politically and with the troops. if you are playing with multiple commanders on your team, you will be replaced in game by your teammate who will continue commanding instead (called a tag). perhaps my favorite addition is the pawn sacrifices; if you already have your queen and your pawn reaches the 8th rank you cannot get another queen but you can choose one of three other options, assassination (take any one of the opponents pieces), political agent (cause a political revolution that causes the commander to be replaced by the next commander) or sabotage (force your opponents next move). in practice those other pawn sacrifice options rarely surface because of the forced recklessness that ends up causing you to loose your queen before your pawns can get to the 8th rank.

see the linked page for specifics and details.

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:
---
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.
---
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

Hey r/chessvariants !

I’ve been building SpellMate for the past few months — a chess variant where each player brings their own card deck that modifies the rules in real time.

Cards can teleport a piece, eclipse a knight for a turn (removed from the board, untargetable), place an enchantment directly on a square, or interrupt your opponent’s move with an instant. The chess rules stay the foundation — same board, same pieces, same win condition — but the cards change everything.

50 unique cards, 4 types, free to play in the browser. Bot available to play solo.

👉 https://spellmate.gg

Happy to discuss the card design and how the TCG mechanics interact with chess if anyone’s curious!

Chess, but you build an army, bolt game-breaking augments onto your pieces, and tear through realms of enemies. Exploding pawns, bishops that burn entire diagonals with holy fire, a king that ascends into a demon slaying god. Stack upgrades, ascend, get rich, Slay The King.

Here is the link to our Steam page in case you want to check it out: Slay the King

Standard board and pieces, but each turn you draw a card: Number (1-5 moves), Reverse (swap sides, 3 moves), Skip (you lose your turn), Draw Two (revive 2 pieces, lose turn), Wild (king’s shield). Standard chess check rules apply. Win by capturing the king (if no Wild) or checkmate. Does this keep enough chess strategy? And honestly: would you play it?

Buddha Chess is a variation of traditional chess that introduces a single neutral piece, called the Buddha, which can be moved by either player. Unlike conventional chess pieces, the Buddha does not occupy a square, cannot capture opposing pieces, and cannot be captured. Instead, it occupies the intersection of four squares and creates a movable protected area known as Buddha Space.

The addition of this single piece significantly changes the strategic character of chess. Attacking lines can be interrupted, pieces can gain or lose protection without moving, and the available escape routes of a king can change during a game. Because either player can move the Buddha, neither side can permanently control the protection it provides.

The objective remains the same as traditional chess: checkmate the opposing king. However, achieving that objective requires players to account for a changing arrangement of protected squares, creating new openings, tactics, and defensive possibilities.

patch logs:

- The game is now feature complete, if you feel like there is still something missing, feel free to let me know and i might consider adding it. Or you can add it yourself because the source files are in the Drive (requires Inkscape).

- Boards #17 & #18 had a wall that was slightly thicker than normal, this has been fixed.

added boards:

56) Fortrified Harbor

57) Poisenous Swamp

58) Horsefarm's Lake

59) Wizard's Sauna

60) Petrified Gaurdian

61) Small Town District

62) War Mongerer's Mansion

63) Temple Of Spacetime

64) Round-about Maze

65) Olympic Stadium

66) Keywhole Island

67) Fallen Titan

68) Egg Sanctuary

69) Hero's Rest

70) Donut-shaped Cliffs

71) Armstrong Peninsula

72) Limbo's Bridge

73) Cave Complex

74) Backrooms

75) Trademark Gateway

Have you already played 9 horses chess?

I have created a free to play game based on Jeson Mor.

Please give it a try: 9 horses chess

https://timurschess.com

Over the weekend, using codex, I realized a project I have long dreamed of. After my second daughter was born, I had to hold her for hours to get her to sleep, and got into learning chess.

It made me wonder if anyone had ever bothered to attempt to invent Chess 2.0. It turns out the 14th century Turco-Mongol warlord Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) was a huge chess afficionado and either played (or may have invented) an expanded variant with a 11 x 10 board, citadels, elephants, camels, up to 3 kings, and frickin' giraffes. Timur was a renowned and brutal military genius infamous for conquering most of Persia and the Caucasus, capturing the Ottoman Sultan alive in battle, and deploying tactical war elephants.

The rules are pretty well documented, but there are no implementations I could find online with a working chess engine AI, online multiplayer, and quality of life features like undo.

Now thanks to codex, I've been able to resurrect the game as a Rust Macroquad Webassembly app. Now we can all play together!

Because a user suggested this feature, and we love this idea because there are already a huge bunch of existing creations on the internet, you are now capable to link your own page as your creation. It will be enlisted as your creation. You can like and share and compare with the other creations, as everyone wants. Great idea by a user, thank you very much :)

We are happy to hear other ideas from you

​

Hey everyone!

I'm looking to bring together chess players from around the world to build a friendly community on Discord where we can play, learn, improve, and enjoy chess together.

Whether you're a complete beginner, a casual player, or someone who's been playing for years, you're welcome!

Here's what I'd like us to build together:

♟️ Casual games: Find opponents, play friendly matches, try different time controls, and meet other chess players.

🧩 Puzzles and tactics: Share puzzles, discuss possible solutions, and challenge each other.

📚 Game analysis: Share our games, review mistakes, discuss interesting positions, and learn from one another.

🤝 Learning together: I'd love to have more experienced players volunteer to help beginners, explain concepts, and join group analysis sessions. Everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something they can share.

🏆 Friendly tournaments: Organize community tournaments, challenges, and possibly different groups based on playing strength.

🌍 An international community: Meet people from different countries, exchange ideas, and find chess partners regardless of where you live.

We'll use Discord to organize everything, while keeping Chess.com and Lichess both welcome. You won't have to switch platforms just to participate.

I'm still setting things up, so I'd also like to hear your ideas and see what kind of activities people would actually enjoy. The goal isn't just to create another server full of inactive members, but to build a community where people genuinely want to come back and play.

Interested? Tell me a little about yourself!

What's your approximate rating or playing level?

Do you use Chess.com, Lichess, or both?

What would you enjoy most: casual games, learning, puzzles, tournaments, or a mix of everything?

What time zone are you in?

If this sounds like your kind of community, leave a comment or send me a message. I'll share the Discord invite once the server is ready.

Everyone is welcome. Let's build something good together! ♟️

Just what the title implies. I'm looking to get into both fairy chess and the relatives of the game across Asia (all descended from chaturanga), and I have two major questions regarding notation. The first is I want to know where best to find a complete index not just for fairy pieces, but also the letters they would employ in game records, The second is related to the playing of other games in the family, particularly sittuyin and the offshoots of xiangqi; I would be interested in knowing where best to find the notation used in those games, since the former puts half the game in the setup and the latter does not use the conventional 64-square board. Thanks to anyone who answers this.

I’d like to introduce a chess variant I’ve spent over a year building, which now has a fully playable showcase you can try right now.

Imagine a traditional FIDE Chess Olympiad match: four games being played side-by-side in a single line. Imagine the players holding their defense, pushing their pawns, but constantly glancing over their shoulders at their teammates' boards. They wonder how their boards are holding up, wishing there was anything they could do to help a teammate who is getting squeezed on Board 3 for example.

Olympiad Chess explores that exact "what if."

In this variant, all four boards are physically connected down the middle, sharing a single "Nexus" across ranks 4 and 5. Through this corridor, players can traverse across boards to launch flank attacks against the opponent's captain, reinforce a teammate who is cornered, or fight for control of the central lane to assert dominance across the entire match.

The idea literally came to me in my sleep last May. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days I started loosing sleep over the idea, so I decided to build a functioning prototype to see if the geometry actually worked. Later in August, watching the first ever Chess Esports World Cup and the 7-match clash between Magnus and Hikaru, it completed the vision for me: competitive chess could be an incredible team esport, or a brand new entry in Chess Olympiads if players were actually forced to cooperate on the board, rather than just tallying up four isolated 1v1 scores at the end.

Most multiplayer chess variants (like 3-player or 4-player chess) alter the board's shape too much in my opinion. Olympiad Chess takes a modular approach instead. By linking the middle ranks 4 and 5 as a shared space, standard 8x8 boards sit side-by-side just like an Olympiad table. Every single piece movement, capture, and rule remains classical chess—pure calculation, no RNG, no cards, and no gimmicks.

I didn't want to overcomplicate the game or reinvent the wheel. The rules are immediately intuitive because it’s fundamentally just the chess you and I already know, scaled into a synchronized team format.

Now, I’m acutely aware of the possible skepticism: many people feel that multiplayer chess variants are a lost cause, dead on arrival, because it’s already hard enough to find people to play with, let alone a lobby with up to 8-player. But having play tested this over and over myself, the tactical depth, team banter, and clutch comebacks are very much real, the fun, the competition is there! And for smaller groups, you can play asymmetric skirmishes like 1v2, 2v3, or against bots.

After more than a year of solo development, I have a complete showcase ready. I'm only a month or two away from full release, and I wanted to put the demo out to the community to see how it's received and hear your feedback.

You can drop your thoughts right here in the comments, or try the free demo on Steam:

Steam Page & Playable Demo: Here & here.

Official Guide / Rulebook: Here.

EDIT: Below is a short gameplay footage I just recorded.

https://reddit.com/link/1x3dsmv/video/0jcl1yqnpvuh1/player

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a small chess project called GM Next Move, and I thought I'd share it here!

The idea is pretty simple: you get a position from a real game played by a GM, and your job is to figure out which move they actually played next.

Check it out here: https://gmnextmove.com/

Playable Link: https://mudralabs.itch.io/checkmist

I've been working on a variant that takes Dark Chess-style hidden information further, and I'd love feedback from people who think about variant design.

Core rules:

- 12×12 random island with terrain. Forests hide pieces (entering one with a hidden enemy is an ambush), hills give +1 vision, mountains and lakes block

- Vision: you see tiles near your pieces and the squares they could move to. Explored-but-unseen tiles show last-known positions

- Sliders are capped at 4 squares. Pawns step 1 orthogonally in any direction and capture diagonally

- No check. Capture the King to win. From round 24, Kings flash into view every 4 rounds so games can't stall forever

- Orders instead of one move per turn: 3 per round to start, each moves one piece (each piece once). More can be bought with Gold, at a rising price

- Gold from your Keep and Mines buys recruits (Pawn, Knight, Bishop, later Rook, Scout, Queen), tech and orders

- Valor (from captures and ambushes) unlocks formations: e.g. a Phalanx of 3 Pawns marches as one unit for a single order, and Knights can't capture its members

Things I'm unsure about and would love opinions on:

1. Maps are 180° rotationally symmetric for fairness, but that lets you deduce where the enemy Keep is. Would balanced-but-asymmetric maps be better?

2. Is the 4-square slider cap right on a 12×12 board?

3. Does the order economy keep the chess feel, or drift too far toward a strategy/4X game?

There's a 10-minute tutorial, a bot (Easy/Normal/Hard) and online 1v1 by room code.

A few months ago I shared RanaRangam here when it was still much earlier in development.

Since then I’ve reworked a lot of the gameplay improvements like improved combat and movement, reworked on king rules, new Map, and a Campaign Mode.

Here’s the new gameplay trailer. I’d really like to know what you think of the current version compared to the original

🎮 Play RanaRangam on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=RanaRangam

Hi guys, I’m building my first game: a mobile chess game inspired by Harry Potter’s wizard chess, where the pieces actually fight when they capture. 🧙‍♂️♟️

Here’s a clip of a very famous game recorded in my game: Légal vs Saint Brie, 1787. The classic trap: white sacrifices the queen, black greedily takes it, and then bishop and two knights deliver the mate. 😈

It’s pixel art, and I'm trying to make it online and a free app.

If you notice anything in the video would love to hear what you think. Any feedback is welcome, even “this is just chess with extra steps” 😅

Hi r/chessvariants! My brother and I are two French indie devs, and Jumble Chess is our game, so full disclosure up front.

How it works:

- Normal chess setup, normal goal: checkmate.

- At the end of your turns 1, 8 and 15, you draw 3 modifier cards and keep 1. Turn 1 is a Classic modifier, turn 8 a Gold one, turn 15 a Radiant one (the wild ones).

- Each modifier is permanent and only affects your own pieces.

A few of the 48 modifiers:

- Ninja bishops (Classic): your bishop can swap places with one of your pieces in its line of sight.

- Zombie pawns (Gold): your captured pawns come back on your first rank, on the file where they were taken.

- Cylindrical board (Radiant): your pieces can leave one side of the board and come back on the other.

- Poisoned checks (Radiant): give 6 checks and you win. Double checks count twice.

The idea came from playing a lot of TFT. We wanted that augment moment where you pick 1 of 3 options and your whole plan changes, but on a chessboard.

You can discover all the game and play it for free in your browser against an AI or your friends, no sign-up:

https://jumble-chess.com

We're also making a physical card edition for February, but right now I'm mostly after feedback: which modifiers feel broken to you ? Do you find good synergies already ?