Game: 4D Chess Created by W. D. Troyka, October 2000 4D Chess is played on a 4x4x2x2 board. The rules of regular chess apply, subject to the following: Each 4x4 board is connected to its neighbors (above or below, to the left or to the right) such that each space in one board is orthogonally adjacent to its counterpart in a neighboring board. Two spaces are diagonally adjacent if they are two orthogonal steps away. Knight motion is defined as moving two steps in one orthogonal direction followed by one perpendicular step. Pawns move one step in the forward direction (north, up, 4-east) and capture diagonally forward (northeast, northwest, up-east, up-west, 4-east-north, 4-east-up), with directions reversed for Black. They promote on the opponent's King row. No castling, en passant, or two-step pawn moves, and stalemate is a loss. In the variant, the King is restricted to orthogonal motion. As with 3D Chess, 4D Chess is designed to be a translation of regular chess into a higher dimension with minimal rule changes. For a 4D chess variant played in a 4x4x4x4 hypercube, check out Chesseract. For more three dimensional chess variants, check out www.chessvariants.com. Updated 01/20/01 Improved graphics. Download 4D Chess Now!
Game: Freeze Chess and DeepFreeze Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, April 2000 Freeze Chess Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. All pieces are frozen which are attacked by the opponent's piece that moved last. In castling it is assumed that the king moves last (this is standard in Zillions). You checkmate the opponent's King by attacking it with a piece which is not attacked itself. You can defend your king by freezing the attacking piece. The king can move into 'check' if he freezes the attacking piece at the same time. A king can freeze the other king. If he is not frozen by a defence move, the king thus checkmates the other king. DeepFreeze Chess Object: Checkmate your opponent's king or immobilize all his/her pieces. Attacked pieces cannnot move (are 'frozen'). You checkmate the opponent's King by attacking it with a piece which is not attacked itself. Furthermore, you win if your opponent cannot move anymore. Example: if the white queen is next to the black king, neither of them can move. The king can stay in check. Only an attack by an unattacked piece checkmates him. A king can freeze the other king, but cannot checkmate him. Download Freeze Chess Now!
Game: Fusion Chess Game and zrf implementation by Fergus Duniho Copyright © 1999-2001 In Fusion Chess, simple pieces can combine into compound pieces, and compound pieces can split into simple pieces. For example, a Rook and a Knight could combine together as a Marshall, or a Queen could split into a Rook and a Bishop. Compound pieces include all two-piece combinations of Rook, Bishop, Knight, and King. The object is to checkmate your opponent's current royal piece. This diagram from a game of Fusion Chess shows some Marshalls and the King/Bishop compound piece, known as the Pope. Red just made the mistake of not thinking far enough ahead, using the Pope to capture an unprotected Pawn. White then trapped the Pope and moved quickly to checkmate. The board was made from computer generated textures. For more games by Fergus Duniho, goto http://www.duniho.com/fergus/games Updated 04/14/01 Optimized code. Download Fusion Chess Now!
Game: Fusion Chessgi Game and zrf implementation by Fergus Duniho Copyright © 1999-2001 Fusion Chessgi is a hybrid of Fusion Chess and Chessgi. As in Fusion Chess, simple pieces can combine into compound pieces, and compound pieces can split apart into simple pieces. Notice that the diagram below shows some compound pieces that are not used in Chess. The object is the same as it is for Fusion Chess, to checkmate your opponent's current royal piece. As in Chessgi, captured pieces change sides and may be redeployed by the capturing player. The board was made from computer generated textures. It is the same as the Fusion Chess board with the addition of some sections for holding captured pieces. For more games by Fergus Duniho, goto http://www.duniho.com/fergus/games Download Fusion Chessgi Now!
Game: Fussballschach Implemented by Uwe Wiedemann, November 2001 In the game of Fussballschach (soccer chess) all rules of the normal chess game apply, but now there are two different ways to win the game: Checkmate the opponent (as usual.) Move any piece that is a starting square of the king of the opponent, i.e., White wins when he moves a piece to e8, and Black wins when he moves a piece to e1. These squares are considered as goal. This is one variant of many chess variants which are coinsidered as a crossover of soccer and chess. Download Fussballschach Now!
Game: GESS Invented by the Puzzles and Games Ring of the Archimedeans Mathematics Society. Implemented by L. Lynn Smith, September 2001. This is a chess variant played with GO Stones on a 20x20 board. The 3x3 pattern of Stones form the pieces within the game and the pattern denotes the move direction and power of the piece. A 3x3 pattern without a Stone in its center may only move up to three spaces, a 3x3 pattern with a center Stone may slide across the entire board. Only Stones of a single color may form a 3x3 pattern and any Stones which land on the outer ranks and files of the board are immediately captured. The movement of a 3x3 pattern is accomplished by moving the Stone which denotes the direction. Example: In order to move a pattern north, just move the Stone located north of the center of the pattern. To move southeast, move the Stone located at the southest corner of the desired pattern. Captures are accomplished when the 3x3 pattern encounters any other Stones, friend or foe. Each player must maintain a King 3x3 pattern, an empty space surrounded by 8 Stones. A player may have more than one King. The game is won when the opponent has no King pattern at the end of a move. GESS was invented by the Puzzles and Games Ring of the Archimedeans Mathematics Society, which is the mathematical society of Cambridge University (UK). The rules were first published, together with a sample game, by Paul Bolchover in Eureka, Vol. 53, the periodical of the Archimedeans. Updated 02/22/03 major code revision, plays very well now Download GESS Now!
Game: Global Chess Global Chess © Februari 2000 by Rob LeRoy Global Chess is chess played on a sphere, with each player's pieces starting at the opposite poles. It is played just like normal chess, except that there is no castling, and pieces can wrap around the poles. This has an interesting side effect of causing bishops to be able to get to any space on the board, conceivably. Unfortunately, due to the sheer size of the board image, this can only be played in 1024x768 screen mode or higher. To change screen modes, right-click on your desktop and choose "Properties...", then go to the "Settings" tab and make your changes there. Forward all comments to Rob LeRoy. Rob LeRoy's homepage. You should extract the downloaded zip file preserving path names. Download Global Chess Now!
Game: Golem Chess Designed Peter Aronson and Ben Good. Implemented by Peter Aronson, January 2003 This game differs from usual Chess in that Queens are replaced by Golems, which move two in any direction, but must be captured twice to be removed -- the first piece that captures them is itself captured. A Golem that captures another Golem is reduced to a 1/2 Golem. Golems can only capture other Golems under restricted conditions. This makes them hang around longer and makes the game less likely to turn into a game of usual Chess (although if both Golems are captured, the possibility of a Pawn promoting to a Golem can still make a big difference). A longer, more detailed description of Golem Chess can be found at http://www.chessvariants.com/diffmove.dir/golem-chess.html. Download Golem Chess Now!
Game: Gothic Evolution Chess Invented and implemented by Harvey Patterson, July 2002 Gothic Evolution Chess is Evolution Chess played on an 8x10 board with with the initial setup from Gothic Chess. All the normal rules of chess apply except for the possibility of evolution through promotion capturing and the longer castling of Gothic Chess (the King now moves 3 squares instead of 2). Pieces are seen as a combination of their abilities: the ability to move like a Knight, Bishop or Rook. Whenever a piece, not a pawn, other than the King captures another piece it adds any additional powers that piece had into its DNA and promotes to a hybrid piece. For example: a Rook that captures a Bishop gains the ability to move diagonally and evolves into a Queen. Simple pieces are the Knight, Bishop and Rook, compound pieces are the Cardinal [Bishop+Knight], Marshall [Rook+Knight], Queen [Rook+Bishop] and Amazon [Rook+Bishop+Knight]. Since the Amazon possesses all three powers, any piece that captures an Amazon becomes an Amazon. All other captures that cause evolution are listed below. Knight + Bishop/Cardinal = Cardinal Knight + Rook/Marshall = Marshall Knight + Queen = Amazon Bishop + Knight/Cardinal = Cardinal Bishop + Rook/Queen = Queen Bishop + Marshall = Amazon Rook + Knight/Marshall = Marshall Rook + Bishop/Queen = Queen Rook + Cardinal = Amazon Cardinal + Rook/Marshall/Queen = Amazon Marshall + Bishop/Cardinal/Queen = Amazon Queen + Knight/Cardinal/Marshall = Amazon Pawns are seen as underdeveloped species which can adapt or evolve through promotion into any of the simple pieces: Knight, Bishop or Rook. Hybridization can only be achieved through promotion capturing, there are no shortcuts in evolution. Updated 07/19/03 black's pawn double move bug fix Download Gothic Evolution Chess Now!
Game: Grated Chess Invented and implemented by L. Lynn Smith, July 2001. Played within a 4x4x6 field, normally vertical but here horizontal. The Pawn steps orthogonal toward the opponent and attacks diagonals and triagonals toward the opponent. Promotes upon eaching the farthest plane. The Knight leaps to the second orthogonal cell then one orthogonal or diagonal cell upon the same plane. The Unicorn slides triagonally. The Bishops slides diagonally. The Archbishop sildes diagonally or triagonally. The Rook slides orthogonally. The Favourite slides orthogonally or diagonally. The Queen slides orthogonally, diagonally or triagonally. The King steps orthogonally, diagonally or triagonally. The King may castle with either directly diagonal Rooks. With the nearest, it merely trades places. With the farthest, it takes its place and it moves diagonally adjacent. All other conditions for castling apply. There are no en passant moves because the Pawns do not make a two-step first move. However, there is a 4x4x8 version of this game which allows for these conditions. The game is won by check-mating the King. Download Grated Chess Now!
Game: Guard and Towers Invented by Christoph Endres and Robert Wirth, 1997, implemented by Jens Markmann, January 2002. Every player starts with one Guard and seven Tower pieces. The goal of the game is to either capture the enemy Guard or move your own Guard to the marked square on the enemy side of the board. All pieces move orthogonally only. The Guard steps one square, capturing anything on its destination square. A Tower steps exactly as many squares as the number of pieces it consists of. It can capture the enemy Guard or an enemy Tower by replacement, but only if the enemy Tower consists of equal or less pieces. A Tower cannot jump. However, smaller Towers may be split off from it, which move according to their height too (this is done by clicking on the destination square for the sub-Tower). For further information please check: www.turm-und-waechter.de (german) www.gameplate.org (english) Download Guard and Towers Now!
Game: Hades Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, September 2000 Object: Checkmate the opponent's Kings. In Greek mythology, Hades is the underworld, separated from the living beings by the river styx. Once someone has crossed this river, there is hardly any return. In Hades Chess, the line between the fourth and fifth rank represents this river. Pieces that have crossed this line cannot come back. If a piece reaches the eighth rank (for Black the first rank), however, this situation is reversed. A white piece then can come back below the fifth rank, but can only cross this line upwards again after visiting the first rank and so on. Since this is true for the kings as well, in some rare positions one king can attack and checkmate the other king. In Variant 2 of Hades Chess, when moving to the eights rank the pieces revert to standard chess pieces, being able to cross the Hades at any time. They never change again. Apart from this, the standard chess rules apply. More freeware as well as real puzzles and games at my home page: http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz/. Download Hades Chess Now!
Game: Half Board Chess Implemented by Ken Franklin, September 2001 All *.zrf files (and related files) included are direct ports of the original releases commonly found at www.ZillionsofGames.com and/or www.chessvariants.com . The set-up utilizes at least one of each differing standard chess piece. Similar liberties were taken, file-by-file, variant-by-variant: some were dropped if considered inadaptable for a half board. Castling has been recoded; Queen-side offers a move-choice dialog, I didn't want to use both Castling sides to simply 'corner-in' the King. A major Thank You goes to the Zillions Team and the many Programmers of their Zillions formatted Original Games for actually doing all the true work (thanks for the quick assistance, Dan). Future upgrades to this release can be easily imagined; all works by other authors shall be publicly released with expressed prior consent*. After the initial release, I've adapted many more chess variants for play on a 4x8 board, now totaling 22 *zrf's with 86 listed variants. Three games were included without first waiting for their author's e-mail feedback (*CoRegal, *Secret Service, *Dunsany's), however I just couldn't leave these games out! Updated 01/05/02 minor corrections Download Half Board Chess Now!
Game: Heaven & Hell Chess Created by W. D. Troyka, June 2001 Heaven & Hell Chess is a chess variant played on two stacked 8x8 boards, the top board representing Heaven and the bottom board Hell. Play within each board follows the rules of normal chess except that a piece captured in Heaven is transferred to the corresponding square in Hell (the "damnation" rule). Any piece of either color on the bottom square is removed from play. Win by checkmating the King in either Heaven or Hell. Repetition is a loss. Play in Heaven is fundamentally altered by the damnation rule. Sacrificing pieces is often advantageous because it increases the strength of your forces in Hell. The interplay between the two boards requires delicate balancing. The moves that improve your position on one board can weaken your position on the other. Players commonly will be winning on one board and losing on the other. The game then becomes a race to see which player can accomplish checkmate on the respective boards faster. The game gives rise to interesting tactical situations. A piece in Heaven is impervious to capture if it would check the enemy King from the same position in Hell. A King that is directly above an opponent King can never be in check. A King in Hell cannot move to a space beneath an attacked friendly piece. Sacrifices that would be unthinkable in regular chess (e.g., a Queen for a Pawn early in the game) are common. In variant II, the players begin with a full complement of pieces on both boards. Variant III also features a full complement of pieces on both boards, with Hell reverse oriented. Pawns transferred to Hell in variant III reverse directions. Variants IV through VI follow "reincarnation" rules. In the reincarnation variants, pieces captured in Hell are transferred back to Heaven. Both boards are equivalent and pieces cycle back and forth between them. The opening arrays correspond to the opening arrays of the first three variants. Please send any comments or bug reports to dtroyka@justice.com. Updated 08/25/01 added 4 variants Download Heaven & Hell Chess Now!
Game: Hecatomb Invented by Kevin Maroney, 1999; implemented by Michael Keller, 2000. Some variant starting positions for chess; queens slaughter galore! Download Hecatomb Now!
Game: Hermit Chess Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, January 2001 Object: Checkmate the opponent's King. An hermit wanted to play chess, but had no partner. So he used a dice to create random moves for his virtual opponent. Since this was not challenging enough, he allowed two random moves for each move he made himself. Soon he won this game easily, so he allowed three, four,... and finally twelve random moves for each move he made himself. The better he got, the more random moves he allowed for Black. See how far you can go and still win! It might be easy to capture Black's pieces, but it is another matter to checkmate the mobile black King. You might need more than a King and a Rook for this task... So it pays to plan ahead! Note that on all partial moves except the last random opponent's King can venture into check. On the other hand, Black can only attack the white King with his last partial move. Recommended: Turn MOVE ANIMATION ON. For more freeware as well as real puzzles and games see my home page http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz. Download Hermit Chess Now!
Game: Hexagonal Chess Invented by Isaak G Shafran, 1939, implemented by Ivan A Derzhanski, August 2001. Classical Western chess transferred to a hexagonal board with as few changes as possible. See the page http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/tyalie/shegra/shegrax.html for more. This version of hexagonal chess was invented in 1939 and registered in 1956 by the Soviet geologist Isaak Grigor'evich Shafran. It was demonstrated at the Worldwide Chess Exhibition in Leipzig in 1960. Download Hexagonal Chess Now!
Game: Glinski's Hexagonal Chess Invented by Wladyslaw Glinski, 1936, implemented by J. Mark Thompson, August 2001; modified from Ivan A Derzhanski's ZRF for Shafran's Hexagonal Chess. Classical Western chess transferred to a hexagonal board with as few changes as possible. See the page http://www.chessvariants.com/hexagonal.dir/hexagonal.html for more. This version of hexagonal chess was invented in 1936 by Wladyslaw Glinski. During his life Glinski successfully promoted the game, which attracted hundreds of thousands of players in Eastern Europe; he also saw the creation of an International Hexagonal Chess Federation and several international tournaments. He died in 1990, and the English-speaking world has heard much less of this game since then; but Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia appear still to have many active players. The notation used in this Zillions implementation is not Glinski's standard, which does not fit conveniently into the ZRF language. The cells on the Queenside half of the board and on the centerline are labelled correctly, but in the 'official' notation, the cell which here is called g2 should be g1; g3 should be g2; h3 should be h1; i4 should be i1; etc. That is, in the Glinski notation each file bends at the centerline at an angle of 120 degrees. Download Glinski's Hexagonal Chess Now!
Game: van Gennip's Hexagonal Chess Invented (1998) and implemented by Sander van Gennip, December 2001 Traditional chess on a hexagonal board. Download van Gennip's Hexagonal Chess Now!
Game: Hexagonal Chess Collection Implemented by Jens Markmann, 2000 This Hexagonal Chess Collection includes McCooey's Hexagonal Chess, Glinski's hexagonal chess, mini-Hex chess by Dave McCooey, and Grand Hexachess by Derick Peterson. Basically, HexChess is a game of chess played on a base-6 hexagonal board. All rules are adapted to the new board shape as closely as possible. The major change from a square-shaped to a hex-shaped board involves the number of squares which are considered adjacent to another square. On the normal chess board, a square usually has 8 neighbours. On the hex-board, a square (or better, a hex) has 12 neigbours: There are now 6 'orthogonal' and 6 'diagonal' directions, as opposed to 4 each. Consequently, 3 different colours are used to make orientation easier, so when moving in an 'orthogonal' direction, the hex colour changes with every step. When moving 'diagonally', it stays the same. A side effect of this point of view is that 'diagonally' moving pieces appear to 'jump' hexes, which is not really true: The Knight remains the only jumping piece. This hex-transition by Dave McCooey is one of the more logical ones. Most chess rules remained, and everything works as one would expect it. The rule changes in detail: 1. There is no castling. 2. The centre Pawn may not double-step. (The second change was made in order to disallow White to seize the centre with her first move.) Due to the increased mobility of pieces, the material that can force checkmate in the endgame has also changed. Among other observations, Mr McCooey found out that two Knights can now force checkmate against the lone King. You may try this for a challenge. Updated 12/08/01 bug fixed. Download Hexagonal Chess Collection Now!
