Gambit
In development
Chess history as a story mode, on a real engine.
A chess RPG on a real engine. Story Mode teaches chess history one era at a time, Classical Mode is pure chess, and Gambit Mode is best-of sets with charging signature abilities. Working title.
Background
Story Mode's hub is the Café de la Régence. Every table is an era, and you can sit at any of them in any order: Morphy and the Romantic game, Steinitz and structure, Capablanca's technique, the hypermoderns, Botvinnik's preparation, and the machine. Talk to a ghost before you sit; its lines change with how you have done elsewhere.
Each era is a rubric: one merit function that grades your moves and also re-ranks the engine's candidates, so the era's opponent plays in character. Opening names arrive with a line of history. An Ask button suggests the era's move with a reason, at the cost of a grade notch.
Classical Mode is pure chess against Stockfish at any strength, or two people on one screen. Gambit Mode is best-of sets between café characters, where charge builds between games and the first game is always pure chess. Progress is a six-character reservation code you can carry in a link.
Where it stands
Playable on this page, in development: Classical against Stockfish and the café. Win a grade at a café table and its master opens up for Gambit sets, where charged signature moves come into play. The café has six era tables and a graded final table, plus a character sheet. No art pipeline, no online play, no sound yet.
What's next
Tune every rubric once people have played them, then piece sets, sound, and the seven-episode story arc.