Chess Wars
Every piece commands a squad. Every capture becomes a skirmish. Our in-house chess game brings miniature armies, dark humor and battlefield spectacle to the browser, with the rules of chess intact.
Your knight brought reinforcements.
Move a knight and horse-riders gallop across the board. Capture a piece and soldiers fight for the square. Chess Wars turns the familiar chessboard into a battlefield where every move has something worth watching.
We’re developing Chess Wars in-house, from its rules engine and squad behavior to its puzzles, dialogue and browser experience. The core game is playable, with more than 50 handcrafted puzzles and connected Lichess features. We’re now working through the final polish before release.
A piece becomes a squad
Each chess piece commands soldiers with their own movement and fighting behavior. Knights ride into position. Bishops, rooks and queens attack at range. Units navigate around one another, form up and fight when a capture takes place. We built the spectacle around the move, giving every piece a physical presence on the board.
See the squares you control
A piece’s influence extends beyond where it stands. Kings surround adjacent squares with guards, queens send forces along their lines of attack, and pawns post sentries diagonally. Mountains, lava and forts give individual squares their own character. Underneath, a strict rules engine handles legal moves, check, castling, en passant and promotion. The chess move determines the outcome.
Meet the hat-wearer
Across six chapters, more than 50 handcrafted puzzle levels give the game its voice. The king is the hat-wearer, the queen is the Matriarch, and rooks are bricks. Pawns are the little ones, until promotion transforms them into something considerably less little. The writing brings dark comedy to positions that still demand serious thought.
Bring your chess with you
Puzzle mode pairs authored positions with tablebase-supported endgame replies. Sandbox offers scripted challenges, while Playback turns recorded PGN games into animated battles. Live mode connects to Lichess so players can use their accounts and play connected games. All four modes run in the browser, with Unity WebGL inside a React interface.