Chess Clash is ordinary chess with one difference: whenever a piece is taken, the two pieces fight it out. Play a friend over live video, or the computer at one of five difficulty levels.
Starting a game
Type your name (or sign in), and a table code. Any code works; a new one is made up for you.
At the table, choose who to play: a friend, or the computer. Against the computer, pick a difficulty. Choose your colour: white moves first, or pick Random.
To play a friend, press Copy link and send it to them. When they open it they sit down opposite you.
Press Start game.
Moving your pieces
Tap one of your pieces. The squares it can move to get a dot, and pieces it can take get a red ring. Tap one of those squares to move. Tap the piece again (or another of yours) to change your mind.
When a pawn reaches the far side you choose what it becomes: queen, rook, bishop or knight.
The 2D board button at the top switches between the 3D battlefield and a flat board with plain pieces, which some people find easier to read. Settings has the same choice, plus square names (a to h, 1 to 8).
The battles
When a piece is taken, a short fight plays out before the winner walks into the square.
Teams
Each player picks a team for their pieces: at the table before the game (Your team), or any time in Settings. It changes how your pieces look on the 3D board and in the battles, for everyone at the table. Against the computer, you can pick its team too, or leave it on Random. With Classic, white plays as the Kingdom and black as the Undead. If both players pick the same team, black's pieces are darker.
Every kind of piece fights its own way:
Pawns slash and stab (or bash, or chomp).
Knights charge in at speed: the knight, the ghost, the battle mech and the velociraptor.
Bishops attack from a distance: a pillar of light, spore magic, a laser, or a sonic hoot.
Rooks are the big ones: they stomp over and smash the ground, flattening the victim.
Queens hurl balls of frost, fire or plasma. The T-Rex queen roars, then bites.
Kings wear crowns and strike twice.
Sometimes the defender swings first and the attacker has to block or dodge. Two queens fight a duel of spells, and two knights charge at each other. Skeletons fall apart and robots go down in sparks.
A battle takes about six seconds. Tap it (or Skip) to skip that one. In Settings you can make them quicker or turn them off, and choose Drawn (lighter) fighters instead of the 3D ones if your phone or computer struggles. Your choice only affects your screen. Older browsers that can't show the 3D fighters get the drawn ones.
The 3D characters are free (CC0) models: the Kingdom and the Undead are the KayKit Adventurers and Skeletons packs by Kay Lousberg; the Monsters, Robots and Stone Age are by Quaternius.
Playing the computer
Pick a difficulty. Each one is played by a different robot:
Beginner (Pip)
Makes lots of mistakes and often gives pieces away. For learning how the pieces move.
Easy (Robby)
Looks one move ahead and often gets distracted. Good for learning.
Medium (Marvin)
Looks two moves ahead and won't leave many pieces hanging.
Hard (Data)
Looks four moves ahead and punishes mistakes.
Expert (HAL)
Thinks for a couple of seconds a move and looks deep. Good luck.
Against the computer you can press Take back to undo your last move, and tick Show hints to have a good move shown in blue every turn.
The game buttons
Take back
Against the computer: undo back to your previous turn.
Show hints
Against the computer: when ticked, a good move is shown in blue on each of your turns. Untick it to play on your own.
Offer draw
Your opponent can accept or keep playing. Robots accept only when they're doing badly, or late in an even game.
Resign
Give up this game.
Rematch
After a game: play again with the colours swapped. Against a person, both of you press it.
New game
After a game: back to the table to pick a different opponent or colour.
Leave
Leave the table. A game in progress is saved (see below).
How a game ends
Checkmate: the king is in check and can't get out of it. Whoever gives checkmate wins.
Resigning: the other player wins.
Draws: stalemate (no legal move, but not in check), an agreed draw, the same position three times, fifty moves each with no capture or pawn move, or too few pieces left for anyone to checkmate.
Stopping and coming back
Games are saved after every move, even if the server restarts. Leave whenever you like; your seat is kept and the game waits for you.
Signed in, your unfinished games are listed when you open the game: press Continue. As a guest, use the same browser and table code (the join screen lists your recent tables). Games nobody touches for 60 days are cleared away.
Friends, watching and video
Sign in, open Friends and add your friend's player name. Once you've both added each other you can see when they're playing, invite them to your table, and join or watch theirs with one click.
If both seats are taken, anyone else who opens the link watches. They can chat, and turn the board round.
The two players can turn on camera and microphone (the Cam and Mic buttons). With the camera off, your avatar shows instead; make your own in Settings.
Accounts, rating and Funtistics
One account works for all the enggrp games (Euchre, Swipe and Chess Clash). Signed in, every finished game counts toward your Funtistics: wins, draws, checkmates, battles won, the strongest robot you've beaten, and your rating.
Everyone starts at a rating of 1000. Win and it goes up, lose and it goes down, by more when the result is a surprise. The computer has fixed ratings: Pip (beginner) 300, Robby (easy) 500, Marvin (medium) 900, Data (hard) 1300, HAL (expert) 1700. The leaderboard ranks players by rating.
The rules of chess, briefly
King: one square any way. Queen: any distance in a straight line or diagonal. Rook: straight lines. Bishop: diagonals. Knight: an L shape (two then one), and it can jump over pieces.
Pawn: one square forward (two on its first move), and takes one square diagonally forward.
Castling: once a game, if the king and a rook haven't moved, nothing is between them, and the king isn't in or passing through check, the king moves two squares toward the rook and the rook jumps over it. Tap the king, then the square two to its side.
En passant: a pawn that moves two squares can be taken by an enemy pawn beside it as if it had moved one, but only straight away.
You may never leave your own king in check. The game only offers you legal moves.
If something goes wrong
"Connection lost": the game reconnects by itself. Your seat and the game are kept.
No battles: very old browsers can't play them; the game still works. Check Settings in case they're turned off.
The 3D board feels slow: switch to the 2D board.
Anything else: press Feedback in the game and tell us. Thank you!