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Schmess

Schmess

Aug 2, 2026 Entertainment & Media
chess variant indie_game puzzle game real-time strategy

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Schmess

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Solo dev here. Schmess is chess with the turn structure removed. Both players move whenever they have a free slot, and every piece freezes on a cooldown after it moves. It's on a half board, with 100+ puzzle stages. If two people played this over a physical board they'd scrape each other's fingers raw - that's roughly the tempo.Plays in the browser, no signup. 29 stages free, one-time unlock for the rest ($3.99 / Rs 149). No subscription, no ads.It's the second of a few small-board variants I'm building (halfchess was the first, more coming). Building a chess engine for a game with no turns turned out to be the hard part - I've put the war stories in a comment below.

Comments (2)

Trystan Durgan Trystan Durgan 3 weeks ago

so it's real-time chess? what's the cooldown per piece

Lurline Hoeger Lurline Hoeger 3 weeks ago

race conditions on simultaneous moves must be a nightmare