ChessWorlds

ChessWorlds is a single-player tactics game where the pieces are alive and the board is a place you travel through. Your pieces climb hills, drop off ledges, and fight across terrain that has real impact on tactics. You win by reading the board and putting together an army whose pieces cover for each other.

I am building this because I have loved chess variants for years (Chess Evolved Online was my favorite for a long time), but I always wished I could make my own pieces and fight across a world instead of a flat grid. So that is the game.

The terrain is a weapon

Enemies hide in the bushes, there is a danger to fall in lava, water floods tiles and still-water freezes whatever lands in it. A tsunami's wake can wash a whole row of pieces out of place. Mechanical lifts rise and drop and change who can reach what. And a Blight creeps in from the edges of the map and eats it out from under you if you are too slow.

Every piece still moves the way it does in chess, but the battlefield has height now. A piece can climb one tile up to reach a square, and the knight jumps, so it climbs two. Standing above an enemy lets you strike downhill, and standing on a ledge means someone can shove you off it.

Four realms, four new chess worldviews

You play a king whose kingdom fell in a single night. You wake up outside the ruined walls with no army left, and you set out to build a new one. Every realm you reach fights differently.

Humans, the classic pieces you start with. On a 3D board you can face any direction, so I gave the pawn its moves mirrored to every side.

Elves live in the forests, hide in cover, and strike from a distance.

Dwarves are tough warriors, shove enemies off ledges, and forge shields to weather a charge.