Schmess
Real-time chess: no turns, per-piece cooldowns, half board
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Schmess - Real-time chess: no turns, per-piece cooldowns, half board

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Schmess is chess with the turns deleted. The idea comes from cooldown chess — but I made the engine much better. How it works: you make TWO moves at a time. Move a piece and it freezes for 8 seconds. Your third move sits in a queue until a cooldown expires. And you capture the king like any other piece — no checkmate, just take it. If you're good at chess this might come easy. If you're just okay, there's a learning curve — and then it gets really fun, and really fast.

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Hey PH! Solo indie dev here. I'm building a series of chess variants on a half board. Schmess is the second one. Next up: re-releasing halfchess, my first variant, and more after that. Why half board? Smaller board, faster games, and each variant only needs one twist to feel completely new. Schmess deletes the turns. The hardest part was the engine. Normal chess engines assume the opponent waits while they think. Mine can't. Happy to go deep on that in the comments if anyone's curious. Two things I'd love from you: feedback on how Schmess feels, and ideas for what chess variant you'd want to see on a half board next. Best ideas might actually get built.

The two-move mechanic with the 8-second freeze feels completely different from regular chess. Caught me off guard how much tension the capture-the-king rule adds, no more slow endgames. Really fun twist.

Maker

 Thanks Mirian

Basically I hated it whenever someone got up to get a coffee on their move.