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sajithdilshan 2 minutes 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
bbx 39 minutes 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 30 minutes ago [-]
Simply click, don't drag
Doches 3 hours 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!
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 2 hours 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.
selimthegrim 3 hours ago [-]
So, Battle Chess 2026?
Doches 3 hours ago [-]
You’ve got me; I was very much a Battle Chess addict once upon a time…
XCSme 2 hours 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 2 hours ago [-]
Impossible?
XCSme 2 hours 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.
addandsubtract 54 minutes 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 53 minutes 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 53 minutes ago [-]
Tapping on the prince also shows move order
jerlam 26 minutes 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.
(which I played manically until I managed _1_ perfect game of --- still have the box/disk....)
sandgraham 3 hours ago [-]
Someone on the leaderboard got to 118? Would be fun to watch that replay.
16 2 hours 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).
purple-leafy 42 minutes ago [-]
Haha so clever love it! Must look into a beam solver
vovavili 56 minutes ago [-]
I would expect no less from Hacker News, good job.
cowboy_henk 2 hours ago [-]
It was a matter of time I suppose. Would love to see the solver!
Hugsbox 11 minutes ago [-]
This is awesome :) thanks OP
impendia 4 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.
bastardo 3 minutes ago [-]
Isn't it pretty obvious? At least I recognized them.
medbar 3 hours 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
amenghra 34 minutes ago [-]
Well done. I think it's deterministic, i.e. playing the same board + same moves again spawns same enemies.
orsenthil 3 hours ago [-]
Very nice. Enjoyed playing this. I know Chess, what is Roguelike here ?
coldcity_again 3 hours ago [-]
In the most general terms, a procedurally generated world with permadeath. The term's inspired by Rogue[1].
"Rogue-like" is the most over-used term these days. It now has almost no meaning, compared to what it used to mean.
axus 42 minutes ago [-]
NES-game-with-no-battery-like
j_4 56 minutes ago [-]
thank you for the kind words!
fsddfsdfssdf 4 hours ago [-]
Well done, Claude!
cowboy_henk 2 hours 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).
avarun 12 minutes 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)
purple-leafy 41 minutes 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
ChessGenome 3 hours 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 2 hours ago [-]
I think it can be reached through settings, then the question mark.
Explanation of the pieces would be nice too!
ahmedehab_01 35 minutes ago [-]
Looks really cool, keep going!
ecesena 4 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!
alexhans 2 hours ago [-]
Fun, responsive and intuitive. Congrats.
fhn 3 hours ago [-]
no bad but the blue and red characters, I have no idea what they are
joemi 2 hours ago [-]
I think those are bishops, and they have different colors based on which color spaces they start on.
55555 4 hours ago [-]
This is really really awesome
lxe 2 hours ago [-]
Genuinely interesting, thank you.
egyptianblue 2 hours ago [-]
That was a lot of fun
NickC25 2 hours ago [-]
Big chess fan here.
This is great!
pjm331 3 hours ago [-]
great game well done i could easily play this for far too long
docheinestages 2 hours ago [-]
This is amazing!
octopus143 1 hours ago [-]
well done!
heyarviind2 4 days ago [-]
This is really cool, bookmarked it
explosionpunch 8 hours ago [-]
This is really fun and intuitive. Pretty, too. What did you build it in?
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.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3856240/Pieces_of_the_Kin...
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.
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....)
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)
Pawnbarian is more chess-inspired than a chess themed, but actually rogue(lite)-like and very good.
https://j4nw.com/pawnbarian/
(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)
Explanation of the pieces would be nice too!
This is great!