How to play

If you know how chess pieces move, you can already play. Everything else comes to you during the game, one thing at a time.

Crazy chess

A normal chess game with three things added. Each can be turned off in Settings under Rules, or turned off all at once by choosing Classic chess.

• Power-up tiles. Glowing squares appear on the board and hold power-ups like Blitz, Teleport, Big Bomb, Shield, Freeze and Swap. Step a piece onto one and it is yours.
• Rule cards. Every so often you draft a card. A common one bends one small rule for a few turns, and the rarer ones can redraw the board.
• Chaos events. The sky has its own plans: meteors, time warps, uprisings, a blackout, a loose duck. Both sides have to play through them.

Hearts

Some games give each side hearts, so a fallen king is only a scratch until the hearts run out. You will see them beside the board when they are on.

Who to play

• The bots: Kitsumi and Lexi, right away, with no account.
• Other people: a random match, an invite link, or a party of up to eight.
• Your Twitch chat, if you stream.

Other ways to play

The named variants are chess with one setting pushed hard. The Arcade is a shelf of whole other games for the same pieces, each with its rules on its own page. The Book of Squares is the campaign: a map of more than 160 hand-built battles.

Do I need to install anything?

No. It runs in a browser on a phone or a computer. You do not need an account either, though a free one keeps your gold, rating and progress in the Book on every device.

Play now, free