Show HN: Chess-Inspired Roguelike

Show HN: Chess-Inspired Roguelike(princechazz.com)

433 points by cowboy_henk 57 days ago | 149 comments

Doches 52 days ago |

There must be something in the water! I’ve been working on a (very different) chess-like roguelike, and just released the demo. Check it out if you’re a fan of weird chess puzzles, bad chess puns, and Hnefatafl!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3856240/Pieces_of_the_Kin...

keyle 52 days ago | |

Nice this is an actual roguelike

selimthegrim 52 days ago | |

So, Battle Chess 2026?

Doches 52 days ago | | |

You’ve got me; I was very much a Battle Chess addict once upon a time…

rockyj 52 days ago | |

Looks great! Gamedev is so cool, being able to create enjoyable, playable worlds and characters must be so satisfying. If you can tell me how to build something like this I will be so grateful.

RyanOD 52 days ago | | |

I've made games in Löve and with straight Python and it's always a lot of fun...though challenging at times. Where I tend to struggle is with the overall game structure. Without being an actual professional programmer (nevermind a game programmer), I'm always wrestling with how to design the code structure in a way that is logical and professional. Leveraging common game design patterns isn't at all straight forward for a person like me.

Here are two resources I found quite helpful...

https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

https://refactoring.guru/design-patterns

suprfnk 52 days ago | | |

It's really not that hard. There's a lot to learn, but it's doable.

Start here: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/intro...

Or if you're impatient like me you click "Your first 2D game" or "Your first 3D game" in the left bar (whichever you prefer) and go through that -- and skipping back to the intro/step by step when you don't understand something.

By the end of that you'll have made your first game.

From there you just do something extra to it. Mix it up. Start a new project with a different (small) idea. Build small projects until small becomes medium becomes large.

Just like learning anything else, really.

justinbeaudry 52 days ago | |

That's awesome! I've been working on nearly this exact same idea as a prototype in Godot. Looks like my work is done! ;-)

Doches 52 days ago | | |

Ooh! I’d love to see that, or to have a chat and swap ideas. My email is in my profile if you’d be up for it.

tpoacher 52 days ago | |

GoG, pls.

Doches 52 days ago | | |

That's up to GoG; I've submitted every game I've released to them and it's like talking into the void, never a response. They're a delight as a customer, but kind of half-assed as a platform (at least if you're a self-published indie).

growt 52 days ago | |

Wishlisted! Looks great

i_am_a_peasant 52 days ago | | |

same, I'll definitely pay for that

haspok 52 days ago | |

This is highly parasitic: someone does a Show HN about their hobby project, and then you come and snap on to it like a leech with your to-be-paid-for completely unrelated game demo.

I find this kind of behaviour disgusting. Why don't you do a Show HN on your own?

jjmarr 52 days ago | | |

"Chess-related roguelike" is a an very crowded genre for unclear reasons and it's difficult to stick out.

So far I've played Shotgun Queen and Pawnbarian. There's also Ouroboros King, Demoncrawl, The Rookery, Passant, Chess Survivors, Gambonanza, Mind over Monarchy, and many more.

aktenlage 52 days ago | | |

> completely unrelated

They are both chess-inspired and roguelike.

IMHO this is a completely normal "hey I've been doing something similar" response. Why are you so aggressive about it?

bbx 52 days ago |

Great game. I love playing chess so this is quite a unique way to play it.

One piece of feedback: dragging a piece on mobile seems inaccurate at times. I’m used to chess apps where it works great. Here it seems the dragged piece doesn’t always end up where I’ve left my finger. I’ve lost a few rounds like this.

tantalor 52 days ago | |

Simply click, don't drag

reassess_blind 52 days ago | | |

That's not very Product Manager of you.

rayquinox 52 days ago | |

Good feedback! It should feel better now :) let me know if it still needs work!

AndreVitorio 52 days ago | | |

I tried finding how to follow you on your site… I really enjoyed this and would like to keep up with your work

jjmarr 52 days ago |

"Chess-related roguelike" is a an very crowded genre for unclear reasons and it's difficult to stick out.

So far I've played Shotgun Queen and Pawnbarian. There's also Ouroboros King, Demoncrawl, The Rookery, Passant, Chess Survivors, Gambonanza, Mind over Monarchy, and many more.

There was even a Humble Bundle for mostly Chess-inspired indie roguelikes.

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/checkmate-chess-games-col...

nimih 52 days ago | |

> unclear reasons

I think it's pretty obvious, tbh. Traditional roguelikes are turn-based, take place on a square grid, are good vehicles for exploring focused mechanical ideas, and can be fun without much in the way of story or graphic design. All of those features mesh well with the rules of chess, which itself is probably the most widely played game in the world.

XCSme 52 days ago |

Can't go over 19, seems to be a lot of RNG, sometimes pieces spawn around protecting each-other and you stuck between them, so not much you can do.

kalx 52 days ago | |

Impossible?

mrgoldenbrown 51 days ago | | |

I would consider many scenarios impossible. How do you proceed when 2 bishops are on the same diagonal protecting each other? That was what I got after capturing the initial horse.

XCSme 52 days ago | | |

It is possible, just saying that I can't do it, and there's no logic behind it.

You just have to be lucky and stumble upon a sequence that allows you to surive.

The RNG is seeeded though, always same seed, so you can determinarically explore all moves and find some sequences that lead to higher scores.

TheGRS 52 days ago |

Dang, that's really fun! I think its solid all-around and no notes on the core game loop.

If you want to make it more accessible to folks like myself who stink at chess, I'd recommend adding some sort of power-ups so that you can take multiple pieces, jump over obstacles, or freeze enemies in place. And with that you probably have a great little game to sell on Steam :)

impendia 56 days ago |

This is cool!

One suggestion: some way to tell what the enemy pieces are? Maybe a legend to the right of the board? I ended up discovering by trial and error.

TheGRS 52 days ago | |

I think it makes a pretty good assumption on understanding core chess rules, but yea that would be nice. The thing that did trip me up at first was not realizing the red and blue bishops were the same piece, I was wondering if I was missing something.

bastardo 52 days ago | |

Isn't it pretty obvious? At least I recognized them.

impendia 52 days ago | | |

Since I last looked, at least on my browser the gameboard has been significantly enlarged.

I'd say it's now obvious, but previously I mistook a bishop for a pawn.

antfarm 52 days ago |

As the random is seeded, I would like an undo/redo button.

rmunn 52 days ago |

Before clicking on the link I thought this was going to be about Gambonanza, a game I've seen some people play on Youtube (on videos that I think were sponsored by the developer of the game, but I don't actually know). Haven't played Gambonanza but from what I can tell you are trying to capture all the rival pieces, you get a coin for each piece you capture, and when you succeed you can spend those coins to buy new pieces or give your pieces new powers (like a shield that protects a piece from the first time it would have been captured). So although it starts out with rules quite like chess (except not totally, e.g. you can have multiple kings and you don't lose until all your pieces are captured, so you can let your king be captured and win with your remaining rook), it can eventually evolve into something quite weird (a king that can also move like a knight, or a rook with protection from being captured, or a "golden" square on the board that if you capture an enemy on that square, you earn 2 or 3 coins instead of just 1).

Actually, Gambonanza kind of reminds me of Balatro in that way: start out with rules resembling the standard game, end up with some very weird combinations. Not really my cup of tea, but might be of interest to others.

erickhill 52 days ago |

UI drag/drop is a little clunky at times, but I love the overall vibe. Doesn’t really feel like a daily game, though. Feels more like it is being shoehorned into that model rather than just being a solo Game Game (like Tetris).

What I mean is as a player, I'll likely not notice the difference in a Friday puzzle vs a Thursday puzzle. And I can replay to my hearts content anyway. So why not simply randomize the board on each replay? Which I'd do anyway.

cowboy_henk 52 days ago | |

The main reason for adding a daily puzzle (or really the seeded RNG) is that part of the game loop is retrying the same seed to find the best lines for that map. Since all pieces are deterministic, we've found it fun to retry the same map to see if a different line works better. It also adds a competitive/multiplayer element to the game, rather than it just being for single player use.

I think both "play styles" make sense, we've just found it more fun to share with friends this way!

Recursing 52 days ago | | |

What's the threshold at which you remove scores from the leaderboard? There were several valid >100 scores earlier today (some mentioned in other comments here)

opowell 52 days ago | | |

Problem is the hidden information about which pieces will spawn is only revealed through repeated play.

Only fix I can think of would be to make this information public.

croes 52 days ago | |

You can just click where should go, no need for drag and drop

WillAdams 52 days ago |

Charming!

Reminds me of Alice:

https://folklore.org/Alice.html

(which I played manically until I managed _1_ perfect game of --- still have the box/disk....)

addandsubtract 52 days ago |

The AI can cheat, because it can move a blocking piece out of the way to then attack you in the same turn. Or maybe it's just something to keep in mind, but it caught me off guard.

smu3l 52 days ago | |

I think the order of enemy moves is deterministic. So if piece 1 blocks piece 2 from attacking you, piece 2 can attack if 1 moves out of the way.

ath92 52 days ago | | |

Tapping on the prince also shows move order

eig 52 days ago |

This is a great puzzle game. I think it actually teaches the concept of "piece coordination" in chess very well.

One suggestion is to have all enemy pieces move simultaneously. I expected that the losing condition is that I am threatened and there are no unthreatened squares to move (checkmate).

However, since the opponents move one-at-a-time, I found that even if I moved to a safe square, sometimes I could be both threatened and captured in the same move! Which is somewhat different from normal chess, since now you have to consider the possible orders in which the opponents move. So even moving to unthreatened squares could be a game over.

ngokevin 52 days ago | |

You can click your own piece and see the move order to see if it's a possibility you'll be moving into a discovered attack. You can sort of predict that pieces will move if they can go from a non-threatening state to a threatening state.

foobarqux 53 days ago |

What is Rogue-like about this?

tweetle_beetle 52 days ago | |

You're right, it's just a puzzle game. Strange to use the theme of chess and change a queen into a prince too.

Pawnbarian is more chess-inspired than a chess themed, but actually rogue(lite)-like and very good.

https://j4nw.com/pawnbarian/

joemi 52 days ago | | |

"Rogue-like" is the most over-used term these days. It now has almost no meaning, compared to what it used to mean.

j_4 52 days ago | | |

thank you for the kind words!

sandgraham 52 days ago |

Someone on the leaderboard got to 118? Would be fun to watch that replay.

16 52 days ago | |

That was me. The engine is deterministic so I wrote a beam solver for it. My score should've been 208 (pretty sure it could play forever; I capped the solver at a max time limit) but I messed up one of my moves (I was manually moving the pieces instead of submitting the final move list with curl).

rienbdj 52 days ago | | |

What is a beam solver?

Were you able to rig up the solver to the running game?

Curious what this looks like!

cowboy_henk 52 days ago | | |

It was a matter of time I suppose. Would love to see the solver!

purple-leafy 52 days ago | | |

Haha so clever love it! Must look into a beam solver

vovavili 52 days ago | | |

I would expect no less from Hacker News, good job.

Daviey 52 days ago | | |

Well done for scoring 2nd place. :)

medbar 52 days ago |

Looks like enemy movements are deterministic, wonder how feasible it is to script this. Was able to increase my score by 4 points trying alternate lines near the end

kingofmen 52 days ago |

Excellent work, very nice!

One tiny UI nitpick: I found the squares' hitboxes to be unintuitively small, requiring more-than-expected precision to get Chazz to land in the square I wanted. (I was initially confused about whether I was making an illegal move.) You might want to either increase the size of the squares, or make the "this square is the target" indicator more obvious.

orsenthil 53 days ago |

Very nice. Enjoyed playing this. I know Chess, what is Roguelike here ?

coldcity_again 52 days ago | |

In the most general terms, a procedurally generated world with permadeath. The term's inspired by Rogue[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)

joemi 52 days ago | | |

In this game, I think _some_ of the less general terms (stricter definition) also apply: turn-based movement, grid-based movement.

chiply314 52 days ago | | |

Its still not rogue like without a meta upgrade loop.

Eric_WVGG 52 days ago | |

yeah I concur

Great little arcade game. Not a rogue-like.

GL26 52 days ago |

This is very satisfying to play. Saw this game on steam that seems close in the « Rogue Like Chess » concept : https://store.steampowered.com/app/3509230/Gambonanza/

handoflixue 52 days ago | |

I was so surprised this wasn't that game! And then the top comment saying "I also built one" also wasn't Gambonanza!

There are so many of these, wow - and nicely distinct from each other, too

n4r9 52 days ago |

This is awesome! I'd appreciate being able to bring up a primer on the rules - perhaps a reiteration of what it says at the start plus a list of pieces and their moves, and maybe a brief description of what strategy the pieces apply when they move.

pantsforbirds 52 days ago |

I had a lot of fun playing the game. I also made a local solver to see how far you can theoretically get, and it's definitely infinite if you play perfectly. Working on the local sim / solver was almost as fun as playing the game :)

pantsforbirds 52 days ago | |

I started by pulling the game source locally and doing some initial testing with a few solvers. I ended up having Claude make a 1-for-1 perfect sim of the original game using rust with some optimizations. The original engine was able to check around 180 moves/s and the rust port was hitting 2,150 moves/s.

After that, I tested a few solvers. Single Player Monte Carlo Tree Search seemed promising, but didn't do as well as I expected. A simple beam search does appear to go infinitely pretty easily.

mrgoldenbrown 51 days ago | |

When you say play perfectly do you mean by exhausting all possibilities? Or is there some way to deduce ahead of time whether the RNG will put you in an impossible situation.

pantsforbirds 51 days ago | | |

The way the game is seeded, it's 100% deterministic. So if you can scan enough potential moves / second, it's very easy to infinitely play the game at a fast rate.

Shockingly, Claude was able to find the exact random generators that the js library uses, list out all of the differences between the languages that might impact the replays (like rounding being treated differently), and include those differences in the simulation. Claud then back-tested on a huge number of games using the original implementation as a golden set generator.

teo_zero 51 days ago | |

> it's definitely infinite if you play perfectly.

Considering that 2 new pieces are spawned for each captured one, if you keep progressing you will exhaust the real estate, sooner or later. The only way to go on infinitely is not capturing, but that means not scoring points. Hardly satisfying, though.

For example today's board can be played infinitely by moving between a8 and b7. Zero points, infinite game!

pantsforbirds 51 days ago | | |

Ah yes, I specifically mean you can keep earning points infinitely. After the board is full, it resets the game, and you get points for each piece on the board. I usually stop the simulation after it clears the board 10 times or so.

fsddfsdfssdf 53 days ago |

Well done, Claude!

cowboy_henk 52 days ago | |

There is some polish with Claude over the past few weeks, but we wrote the engine over 10 years ago actually. Each piece moves using a modified version of A* to simply find the shortest path to Prince Chazz (the piece controlled by the player).

purple-leafy 52 days ago | | |

You probably don’t need A*, do you actually want the AI to move optimally? That would infer the game ends sooner. You could probably just use greedy heuristics

avarun 52 days ago | | |

Your passkey login doesn't even work. I think the nature of Claude usage here goes a bit beyond "some polish".

(For reference, signing back in with a passkey seems to be impossible even after successfully creating an account with one. Every time you sign in it attempts to save a new passkey right after asking for the old one)

ecesena 56 days ago |

I think I found a mini bug. Say I do a score of 10. Then I change board. Then I die with score < 10. I still have 10 for that board. It makes it easy to cheat the leaderboard :) Fun game!

frisia 52 days ago |

Very cool idea! More of an arcade game though than a roguelike, but very enjoyable. One nit i have: it seems like the seed is fixed? where units spawn every turn.

ChessGenome 52 days ago |

Very cool concept only annoying thing was I exited out of the instructions panel and then wanted to revisit it later but it seemed impossible

fidrelity 52 days ago | |

I think it can be reached through settings, then the question mark.

Explanation of the pieces would be nice too!

seabass 52 days ago |

This is so fun! It would be cool to reuse the replay functionality in order to see how the top scorers managed to get such good scores.

jameshart 52 days ago |

Why did you make the player character, who wears a crown and moves like a queen, a prince?

throwfaraway135 51 days ago | |

Maybe because the son of a queen is a prince?

WenboS 52 days ago |

Really neat idea. I like how the chess constraints make the choices feel readable without making it feel like regular chess.

Took me a minute to understand what was going on, but after that it clicked. Would be fun to see more piece-inspired mechanics added over time.

nielsbot 52 days ago |

I thought it might be similar to this Playdate game, which is a sort of Chess RPG/adventure:

https://play.date/games/questy-chess/

Pretty unique and interesting...

martini_p 52 days ago |

Who remembers Archon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon:_The_Light_and_the_Dark

fhn 52 days ago |

no bad but the blue and red characters, I have no idea what they are

joemi 52 days ago | |

I think those are bishops, and they have different colors based on which color spaces they start on.

RyanOD 52 days ago |

Fun game! And the subtle animation effects are great.

One suggestion...it's unclear to me why I would sign up. Maybe offer a few details so I know why I would sign up for this.

jerlam 52 days ago |

Interesting, reminds me of Really Bad Chess where the pieces change whether you win or lose. If you're really bad the game might give you all queens or rooks.

tunafighter 52 days ago |

Very nicely done ! I think I have a new addiction now !

bryanhogan 52 days ago |

Very cool!

Do you have any content on how you built it? I also enjoy making web-based games and would love to learn about other people's processes!

sajithdilshan 52 days ago |

The game is quite great, but the queen movement is flaky. Even if it carefully drag and drop it, it just moves to a different block

blackarck 52 days ago | |

I noticed that as well, sometimes you would select another box and it would land on another one dying !

devdoxxx 52 days ago |

This game is fun af man you were on to something

niek_pas 52 days ago |

This is cool! I personally really dislike having AI on the leaderboard as it feels completely antithetical to human play.

purple-leafy 52 days ago |

Great game! Is it a different board each day?

amenghra 52 days ago |

Well done. I think it's deterministic, i.e. playing the same board + same moves again spawns same enemies.

bastardo 52 days ago |

That's fun. I may have missed it when starting: What are the rules of movement for the opponents?

joshuakcockrell 52 days ago | |

They have the same movement as their equivalent chess pieces.

momento 52 days ago |

This is great! I would love this even more with a chess clock. 3+2 would be great!

fogleman 52 days ago |

Love it. The knights seem much more annoying / powerful than you'd expect.

Vincenius 52 days ago |

Very fun game! I really like the idea. Already shared it with my chess group :D

55555 53 days ago |

This is really really awesome

explosionpunch 53 days ago |

This is really fun and intuitive. Pretty, too. What did you build it in?

airstrike 52 days ago |

why does this suggest opening my password app the minute it loads?

https://i.imgur.com/MmJYyKG.png

uzyn 52 days ago | |

The site has a hidden webauthn trigger[1], an anti-pattern that automatically logs user in via passkey if it exists. A better approach, IMO, would be requiring user to click "log in".

[1]: `<input type="text" autocomplete="username webauthn" style="position:fixed;top:0;left:0;width:1px;height:1px;opacity:0;pointer-events:none" aria-hidden="true" />`

cowboy_henk 52 days ago | | |

Just fixed this, let me know if you run into more issues.

sureste 52 days ago |

I'm hooked. I didn't even know I needed this.

alexb87 51 days ago |

Who is the owner, the creator of this nice game ?

Zebfross 52 days ago |

Fun game! There should be a check mate though, right?

rienbdj 52 days ago |

Cool game.

Seeing as this is HN, please can you talk tech stack?

PashaGo 52 days ago |

You should add a timer. Bullet chess is fun

JRGC1 52 days ago |

there's a {glitch|feature} where the castle can kill you after another piece moves out of the way, it will...

foo12bar 52 days ago | |

Click on the queen. It will show the order the pieces move. If one piece blocks another from killing you, and the first piece moves earlier, then the second will be able to move after and kill you.

uHuge 52 days ago |

Replay not working properly on mobile..?

alexhans 52 days ago |

Fun, responsive and intuitive. Congrats.

bojanstef 51 days ago |

This is addicting, good job

heyarviind2 57 days ago |

This is really cool, bookmarked it

lxe 52 days ago |

Genuinely interesting, thank you.

ahmedehab_01 52 days ago |

Looks really cool, keep going!

Hugsbox 52 days ago |

This is awesome :) thanks OP

pjm331 52 days ago |

great game well done i could easily play this for far too long

Forgeties79 52 days ago |

Amazing how any time there’s a leaderboard there’s somebody using it to market their thing. I won’t name the one I see currently to avoid rewarding the behavior further (though I now have a negative view of them), but folks seriously: can we just do something fun for once and not see everything as an opportunity to be leveraged?

shippedbytim 52 days ago |

This is pretty fun!!

egyptianblue 52 days ago |

That was a lot of fun

dmurvihill 51 days ago |

Very cool, thanks!

taffydavid 52 days ago |

I love this so much

Chipatama90 52 days ago |

This is amazing!

docheinestages 52 days ago |

This is amazing!

NickC25 52 days ago |

Big chess fan here.

This is great!

wyamichelle 52 days ago |

this is sick. need a multiplayer.

frankfrank13 52 days ago |

please add a shareable score!

Calgaryp 57 days ago |

Really fun !

rahatkabir 52 days ago |

i played some minutes, cool

AgentMasterRace 52 days ago |

Wait until you see my curling rogue like. Spoilerz curling fucking sucks solo.

melih1im 52 days ago |

nice game...

octopus143 52 days ago |

well done!

akira_dev 56 days ago |

This is so cool bro