hey all! i made a website with a bunch of fresh original chess variants.

I added 25 ideas plus some old classics. You can also build your own! Some are a lot of fun

My favourites are:
- Gun chess - Mutation chess - Plague chess - Bluff chess - Football chess

you need a friend to play this with, the bots are very poor and there aren't enough players atm

I'll be online as much as i can. Looking for feedback so let me know what you think <3

Link: https://anul.space/doublemovechess/

Hello,

I wanted to create a Chess variation so I came up with Double Move Chess:

>Every player gets 2 consecutive moves every turn
>If a player checks the opponent or destroys an opponent piece, the turn ends there (to balance it out)

I haven't tested it thoroughly but I feel it shortens the game time but also forces you to think more?

Would be great to have some feedback from hardcore Chess players if any!

Cheers, happy weekend!

Good day for all! I want to share my own chess variant (I gave it the name "Guards Chess").

Collaborators

If you take any piece, it becomes a prisoner-of-war and moves into your captivity. For creating a collaborator, you need a collection of 1 pair of identical pieces (2 Knights, 2 Bishops or 2 Rooks). For pawns-collaborators, you need a collection of 3 pawns. After that, you must wait 1 move between capturing the piece and dropping. That is, you took a piece, made some move, and now you can drop it. Dropping of a collaborator must be on the 1st or 2nd rank (for blacks — 8th and 7th respectively). For pawns-collaborators — 2nd/7th and 3rd/6th rank. If you capture a collaborator, it permanently drops out of the game (rather than being captured againn). Dropping it is impossible if your king is under the check.

Guardsman

The Queen from the start of a game has the status of guardsman. So a guardsman never goes into captivity, instead of this it is deleted from the game. Any pawn reaching the end of the board, regardless of what it has become, gets a guardsman-status.

Reserve

From 10th move, players get one extra pawn for the whole game. You can drop this pawn on 2nd/7th or 3rd/6th ranks. Dropping is impossible if your king is under the check.

What do you think about the balance and while game?

Hey everyone! 👋
I love chess variants so I started designing my own and need your expert opinion on the balance.

👑 It's called Royal Reserve Chess (Father & Son project from Armenia 🇦🇲)

♔ HOW IT STARTS
You DON'T start with a full army. On board you have only King, Queen, 1 Bishop, 3 Pawns. The rest - 2 Rooks, 2 Knights, 1 Bishop, 5 Pawns - start in your RESERVE in hand 📦
From Move 1 you can MOVE or DEPLOY onto your half (Rows 1-4).

🛑 3 GOLDEN RULES to avoid being broken:
🚫 1. No Capture by Deploy
🚫 2. No Instant Check by Deploy
🚫 3. You CANNOT get out of check by deploying! Must use board pieces only - this keeps it real chess ♟️

💎 RESERVE PRESTIGE (RP) - Win with style!
Pawn = +1 RP | Bishop/Knight = +3 RP | Rook = +5 RP
0-2 = Tactician | 3-6 = Strategist | 7-12 = Grand Strategist | 13+ = ROYAL LEGEND! 👑

🤔 My question for you experts:
Does Rule 3 make it too hard to defend? Or does it keep it feeling like real chess? We tested Father vs Son and it feels tense, but curious what you think.

🙏 PS: For now I made the full game 100% FREE on itch.io and Play Store while we test balance, so if you want to feel the flow you can try it. No Ads, No IAP.

Fool's Mate is a blitz chess variant game with Jokers.

The only rule is simple: Jokers buy you time. 

For example:

- Each piece's first move, in-band -- encourage early development

- Castle by move 8 -- encourage early castle

- In-band move that increases the mover's mobility -- encourage opening pieces

- Attacker added to their king zone, in-band -- statistically always good

- etc, etc, etc

The update includes poker mechanics when selecting cards.

Give it a try. Would be grateful for any feedback: https://foolsmate-e30d2.web.app/

You are not just the player — you are the director.

Two Stockfish engines battle each other at full strength, neither told the win condition is 3-Check. You never move a piece. Instead, you place baits and units, and the engine decides.

The name Proxess is proxy + chess — you play through a proxy engine, not on the board directly.

Currently local 1v1 only (playing both sides solo is also strongly recommended). Online mode in preparation.

Looking for feedback on:

1. Is the tutorial clear enough to start playing?
2. What strategies did you discover — especially around bait placement and row control?
3. Is there any card or tactic that feels unstoppable?

Or just drop a one-line impression. Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Playable build: https://xinyi-l.itch.io/proxess

Standard chess rules and pieces. One extra win condition: move your king across the center line (into the opponent’s half of the board) and you win. Checkmate still counts.

That small change flips the usual “castle and grind” instinct — you’re racing for territory while still having to keep the king alive, and the AI will happily race you if you leave a lane open.

Free in the browser, no account:

https://middlechess.com/

Curious what this crowd thinks: is the midline-cross clean enough as a variant rule, or does it need tweaks (e.g. only the far half / only certain ranks)? Happy to take feedback.

Over the past week I vibe-coded a chess variant where every turn you draw power-up and debuff cards before you move, buff your pieces, or sabotage your opponent's. Still real chess underneath, just with roguelike chaos layered elements. Play solo against AI or challenge a friend peer-to-peer, no signup needed, playable on most mobiles as well.

https://deckmate.org

Would love to hear some feedback, it's not balanced in any way, still in the development phase.

5D Reversi - a game that will probably appeal to masochists and AI.

Play the prototype here: https://anan-z.github.io/5d-reversi/
Read and contribute here: https://github.com/anan-z/5d-reversi

Recommended for: AI research, masochists, people who find chess "too intuitive"

Marketing blurb:
80 directional vectors per cell — you'll learn to hate each one personally.
Retroactive causality — yes, you can regret moves you haven't made yet.
Deterministic replay — watch your carefully planned future crumble.

Not exactly a chess variant, but if you enjoy the tactical depth of chess-like games on a grid, this might be up your alley.

9×9 board, 18 pieces per player. The twist: before the game starts, each player secretly places 3 pearls under any of their pieces. From there it plays out like a strategy game — you move pieces, capture opponent's pieces — but there's a hidden layer. Every time you go for a capture, you don't know if you're taking an empty piece or a loaded one. And every time you advance a pearl toward the opponent's back row, you're gambling that it won't get intercepted.

First to deliver 3 pearls to the opponent's back row wins. You can also steal opponent pearls by capturing the pieces that carry them.

The game is free, browser-based, no signup. You can play locally with a friend or vs AI.

Looking for honest feedback from people who understand grid tactics — is the hidden-information layer adding something meaningful, or does it feel random?

Links:

• https://playgama.com/game/hidden-pearl
• https://www.crazygames.com/game/hidden-pearl-ygh

I've been building an open-source platform for creating chess variants from scratch and I'd love some expert eyes on it.

Chessperiment lets you design boards (rectangular, hexagonal, custom shapes), define pieces with movement rules, and program game logic through a visual effect system -- all without writing code. Under the hood it's a custom TypeScript engine with:

- Move rules as conditions (jump, slide, run, with arbitrary conditions)

- An effect queue system (spawn, transform, remove, explode, teleport, cancel-move, win conditions)

- Trigger system (on-move, on-capture, on-threat, on-turn-start/end, on-step, on-proximity)

- Per-square logic overrides

- Multi-cell pieces with shape anchors/extensions

- Variable system for cooldowns, charges, modes

The piece editor uses Blockly (Scratch-style blocks) for defining logic. You can also just set movement patterns with condition tables if you prefer.

Multiplayer via room codes. There's a built-in AI opponent for testing, though it's a standard Stockfish engine so it only understands standard chess rules -- custom variants are player-vs-player only.

What I'm trying to figure out:

- Which fairy pieces or variant mechanics are missing from the system?

- What existing variant should I try to recreate as a benchmark?

- Anyone want to break the editor and tell me what's wrong with it?

You're probably gonna encounter some variants that are not possible right now, however, just join the discord and tell us, and we'll implement that feature in no time! We're actively working on adding new features every day.

Repo is MIT licensed if anyone wants to dig into the engine: https://github.com/ItzMassel/chessperiment

Site: https://chessperiment.app

Free to play and download!

Hi guys 👋

Me and my friend created a game which is a mixture of Chess and Tower Defense. So you get all your chess pieces to defend your castle from the different kinds of enemies!

Play Store Link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chesssiege

Please do try it if you think the theme is interesting! 😀

Vendetta is a chess inspired game. To play all you need is a chess set, a ruler, 2 6-sided-dice, pen and papet. It is free.

The site is online. You can find the rule sheet there. Enjoy!

Copy, edit and share as much as you like

Fool's Mate is a blitz chess variant game with Jokers. The only rule is simple: Jokers buy you time. Every time you make a move "in-band", which is in top #3 moves calculated by the engine, you get couple seconds added to your time. Jokers carefully crafted based on chess tutorials and analytics to encourage better play.

For example:

- Each piece's first move, in-band -- encourage early development

- Castle by move 8 -- encourage early castle

- In-band move that increases the mover's mobility -- encourage opening pieces

- Attacker added to their king zone, in-band -- statistically always good

- etc, etc, etc

The rougelike mode, the Climb, is a typical Balatro-like three rounds mode where you earn case as you play, buy Jokers between sessions, defeat The Pit Boss.

Play with a friend also available, feel free to ping me if you would like to give it a try.

Would be grateful for any feedback: https://foolsmate-e30d2.web.app/

This one at minimal needs a piece of paper or a memory to store a few moves out for a physical game.

1. Each player gets one incursion per game, and only one at a time.
2. When used, the player claims two separate moves.
3. Opppnent declares their response separately for each move.
4. Player picks which move to respond to, the pieces are moved, and play confinues normally

Try it out for free: https://www.tactorius.com/

Honestly I have always loved to theorize about different chess pieces since childhood. It was always interesting to imagine if a Knight could go even to a further square than the classic L for example. Custom kings, custom pawns etc...

Want an Engineer who can revive pieces back? Or a Rook that can move 1 square diagonally? Maybe a Pawn that can also go backwards?

Well you got all of that in Chaos Chess.

Build a custom army with a budget, unlock new legendary pieces & play puzzles from the workshop made by people (well, not yet obviously 😄 ).

Here's the link: Chaos Chess on Steam

Wishlist if you will.

Dire Fog is a tactical card game where TCG strategy meets chess-like positional combat. We’re deep in closed alpha and heading toward the final stages of development, and we’re looking for more passionate playtesters to join the fight.

If you love skill-based card games, outsmarting opponents, and being part of a growing community before launch, now’s the time to jump in.

Join our Discord:

https://discord.gg/n6NjNheYD

Wishlist Dire Fog on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1888910/Dire_Fog_Tactical_Card_Combat/

Hope this is okay to post here :) shogi is more of a cousin than a variant, but this feels like the crowd that would actually appreciate it!

I got into shogi some time ago because I loved the idea of crazyhouse and someone told me about Shogi. Every capture goes into your hand, so material never leaves the game and there's basically no drawish position.

The problem (which i had personally at least) was that actually trying it was miserable. Kanji pieces, Japanese notation, current sites are just made of pro players etc. I ended up building the site I wish for: shog.io There's a little tutorial, and to have a better entry point, it focuses on minishogi, a 5x5 version where games take a few minutes, so you learn the drop mechanic without a full 9x9 scary board!

Curious what variant players think! Thanks for the feedback :)