this rules

Really cool game idea, was fun!

That's genius! A great game and a great take on the theme.

Interesting idea, it was fun to see the battle play out in the end

That was fun - cheering on the AI to make the right move :)

Wow, such a different experience of playing chess. It also matches the theme very well.

Loved the twist on chess, fits theme greatly!

An enjoyable chess experience haha good work on the AI dude, entertaining to watch as the it struggles to make a move, you could make the accepted click mark a bit wider maybe and a tetris like overview of wich pices are coming, maybe randomize it for an added challenge? haha

@kekkodude third game mode (named Randomised) actually has pieces order randomised:)
AI is not by me, it's from https://github.com/douglasbagnall/p4wn , but, yes, it's pretty good, especially for javascript.

Very innovative, good job

Loved it haha, chess is in itself a fantastic game though ;)

i see you didnt take stale mates into concideration
the rook and king has been stalemating for some 25 moves

@kekkodude Yeah, I did not manage to make and debug draw conditions in time.

Super fun chess like game. Very difrent way of thinking required.

Amazing concept, would love to see this made I to an official type of chess

@nachtwitch Actually, there is an ungodly amount of chess variants, and many of them involve dropping piece on board mid-game. Most well-known such variant is Shogi, aka Japanese Chess, where you can place captured enemy pieces on board instead of normal move. So, theoretically, it's possible that there is something exactly same or similar to this that is official somewhere. It would require three players, though - two for moving and one for dropping.

Hmm, now that you have said that, it actually can be a fun way to play chess with more than two player!

Oh wow, super cool concept! Wonderfully executed too. I wish there was a mode where you could also move your pieces instead of AI! Nice game!

@blobo I was considering something like this, maybe will add it later. It would give huge advantage to player, naturally, so I would need to compensate it with some big handicap.

As someone who is rubbish at chess, I Really enjoyed this! Great spin on standard 'ol boring chess :D

Clever work! Nice to see a new spin on a traditional game.

I like chess remakes with new rules and I was very much impressed with this one, very innovative. I wonder how it would feel playing with these rules with another person and not the AI.

@maximbegunov Only one way to know:) You just need a physical chess board and two other physical people. Maybe there is a way to play online without server enforcing rules and letting you place and remove pieces as you wish, but I can't find it right away.

Great idea! Definitly innovative :smile:
It was quite challenging, but I managed to win few times :upside_down:

As a huge fan of chess, this is such an incredible idea. Good job!

I don't remember anything about chess from my childhood, but I tried to play anyway. The execution is so simple (but I like it!), but the idea is very interesting and complicated.

Really cool take on the theme and chess. I enjoyed playing it as a person who enjoys chess.

Very interesting take on the theme! I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/PWHzHVXDNtQ

The AI would fall into endless loop, but it's still fun to watch them play

@tmpxyz I had no time left to properly detect such situations, but they should be treated as a draw

This is an excellent idea, and you really pulled it off. Nicely done!
Main things I'd personally want to change:
The placing felt odd. I think the piece was offset from the mouse pointer, and I wasn't sure if I was pointing from the piece, my mouse, or both. So sometimes it wouldn't let me place a piece, and I wouldn't know if it was how I was clicking, or if I just couldn't move there.

Overall, an amazing game. Sent this to a friend who does alot of chess, they're sure to enjoy it!

@mrpiedpiper Yes, UI is definitely the weakest part. It's a pretty dirty hack of a pretty old engine. It's easier to write one from scratch (or adapt some more modern one, like chessboard.js) than fix this, which is probably what I'll do.

I love chess. And I also happen to love different implementations of chess games, with sometimes a few different moves and different rules ... this was fun and also a very good interpretation of the theme, thanks for making this!

Great twist on the theme!

Very nice idea, but it's a bit confusing. Maybe animations would help a bit?

@frank-gevaerts they would, I m working on better interface at the moment

Oh God, what a great game! The amout of content just mezmerizes, it's classic chess but with indirect control! And you managed to write AI that sometimes even do something legit. I'm astonished, 10/10!

When it is AI vs AI I stand a chance of winning!

@lesinvisible It would be very hard to write passable chess AI from scratch in two days( though probably not impossible). LD rules allows using pre-made libraries, so I used a public domain https://github.com/douglasbagnall/p4wn engine.

ШЕДЕВР!
AWESOME, DUDE!

This is a very interesting spin on good ol chess, love it!

just build normal starting positions and go get some tea)

Really liked this take on the concept, had a lot of fun with it.

Love it, simple yet fun, smart use of AI

Neat idea, and interesting application of the theme. I won the game I played, but I can take no credit, the AI did most of the work, picking up the slack from my poor choices.

what a great concept! really clever AI use, v fun!!

I really liked that I don't have to do the actual playing part. I am wondering, did you write the chess player AI during the jam or did you use a library of some sort? Anyway awesome job! Thank you for making this game!

@mrerdalural I have used https://github.com/douglasbagnall/p4wn engine. It's probably the best completely public domain engine on javascript, though there are more advanced GNU ones, such as Garbochess-JS and Lozza.

@baturinsky Oh I see! I will check it out if ever decide to do a chess game in the future. Thanks!

This is truly an innovative game! I had fun in it. Good Job!

Great concept! Got carried by the AI though, won on my first game while I suck at chess :D

@ruud-cremers " won on my first game while I suck at chess" - I'm starting to suspect that' the half of this game appeal:) I'm not really good at chess either, to be honest.

Turn: 24 White wins... This game rocks! Congrats on completing the Compo.

congrats on competing the compo! the game is super innovative and unique, but very unbalanced. perhaps making the double nothing a default, but instead of the player placing the blacks, the AI should do it

@space-nomad Yeah, I had neither time nor chess skill to make it more balanced for good players. If you have idea of more challenging mode, you can fiddle with modes in display.js file - they are in very simple format such as
```
{
name: "Start With Nothing",
bag: "KPRPBPNPQPNPBPRP",
board: "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/8/8 b - 0 1"
}
```
Where "bag" is order of pieces to place and "board" is starting position FEN location (slightly malformed here, having no castling data, but will be fixed in post-compo)
I'm working on post-compo version now and you (and anyone else) are welcome to suggest modes.

I'll eventually add modes where AI can take role of piece placer for one or both sides, and player maybe playing "normally".


Cool idea.

I love chess and that's an amazing chess game... That was an incredible game! You just made me happy :D

As a Chess player I love it. But it is very easy to win every time (If the ai does not do a stupid perpetual) i'd like to see a challange mode where you get less pieces or something

@ausstein Have you tried other three modes (from menu on the left)? Can you win easily even in Human Wave mode?

Also, you can add some self-limitations, such as only placing pieces on second row. If you will find some of them interesting and tell me, I'll try to add it in post-compo version.

@baturinsky
I played a couple of years of club chess as a child, but I am not extremly strong 1300 on lichess if that tells you something.

I found the Human Wavemode the easiest out of the 3.

I guess your AI is based on Tree search but does not consider the possibilities of placing extra pieces. Am I correct? Did you write your own AI or did you use one of the open source libaries?

One of the things that makes it so easy is that the AI always brings the queen into play very early, which would make sense if your oponent had only very few pieces remaining. But like this you can improve your position with a tempo on the queen nearly every move. This makes it very easy. Also every time your AI desides to attack a piece you can place your piece to attack a second piece and the opponent can't defend both threats at once.

For the human wavemode you just keep placing pawns with a tempo on your opponents pieces untill you have an unbreakable wall. This would all be not possible if the opponent opened a lot more reserved, starting with a forward pawn structure for himself.

Still even with a better ai that takes the placing into account white should be inherently better, since he can open however he wants and the placing basically gives you extra moves. Which is why i suggested removing some of whites pieces as compensation :)

Using only the first two rows is a lot more challenging but mostly frustrating since your ai basically tries to bring the king into the center, which is again a strategy for when you have few pieces left but very stupid for this game. I managed to win that as well once I convinced the ai to bring the king to safety.

Only second row is not an option because it gets full.

btw @kekkodude this is called a draw by 3fold repetition, not a stalemate. A stalemate is a draw because one side has no legal moves but is also not in checkmate

@ausstein thanks for in-depth analysis. Yes, AI does not know anything about drop-ins, it is sure that it plays absolutely normal chess:) I'll try to think up how to make it more challenging for competent Chess players. Maybe forbid placing new piece where it attacks enemy piece? But then it will make gameplay maybe too indirect...

@baturinsky I don't think that is possible. Placing a queen without attacking any piece for example is nearly impossible. What I would do is make a disadvantage slider in random mode, measured in pawn value. if you set it to 0 you'll get all the pieces in the end. If you set it to 1 it will give you 1 less pawn. If you set it to 3 it will give you either 3 less pawn or 1 less bishop or knight etc.

@ausstein I'll think about it. There will be an option for player to delay placing piece if there is no place to put it, or he wants to give AI a handicap or for whatever other reason. I'll also experiment with "point buy" mode, where you have to buy pieces to place.

Great way to bring "Start with Nothing" to the chess table. Interesting twist, even if I did find the standard mode too easy.

Ausstein mentioned some good points and knows more about chess than me. I can point out that you could place a queen behind one or more of your pawns and there wouldn't be any direct attacks. I feel like the ability to immediately place an enemy piece under threat (like placing a bishop or rook to place the enemy king in check) made the game too simple - less strategy and more pressing the advantage once you had a 'sniper' piece. I'd be interested in trying a "no direct attacks" version.

I love the concept of the game and how it uses the theme - it's got to be one of the most creative ways to handle it. I guess chess has this charm to it that allows some creative modifications - I remember seeing another fun chess-based concept many Dares ago.

The different modes added to replay value, too. I like how different mimics resulted in quite different strategies. Double nothing has got to be my favourite, because of how you try to strategically place the white pieces while sabotaging the black pieces placement at the same time.

Well done. ^^

(Played post-compo only)

Great game. Like auto-chess with actual chess pieces. I played many rounds.

I found Human Wave the hardest. It's easy to lose early on if you're not careful, and in the late game it's common to start with a large group of pawns but then they get destroyed by the opposing queen and rooks.

In Double Nothing you can make it easier for yourself by getting into and advantageous position early on and then passing for the rest of the game to avoid placing any more black pieces.