Originally published on LinkedIn (June 17, 2026). Play it at chexx-game.netlify.app; source on GitHub.

A while back (almost 2 yrs ago), I came up w/ an idea to make chess game more playful & fun for a broader population.

Why?

For most of the people, the problem w/ chess, is that it has no chance element in it, which they translate it to not being fun enough. By this, I mean, if two players play against each other for (say) 10000 times, the "better" player, will certainly win more matches (+5001). This is what most people don't like about chess. Actually for a lot of people, that's one of chess's biggest barriers. There's little room for surprises. If one player is significantly stronger than the other, the outcome is often predictable.

In Chexx, w/ it's initial version being released only digitally, there's a randomness element baked into the game (thus the xx replacing ss, making it CHEXX). The goal is to make the game more enjoyable for that group of players while preserving much of what makes chess interesting in the first place.

What?

Chexx is Chess w/ one major different:

Once u move a Major (Queen/Rook) or Minor (Knight/Bishop) piece, the moment it lands on the target square, its type changes (Transmuted); for example Knight becomes Queen, so u've got 2 queens.

The transmuted piece is then treated according to its new type. If it's now a Queen & can check the opponent's King via a diagonal route, the check is legit. However, it no longer threatens pieces using its pre-transmutation L-shaped Knight movement.

There could/will be lots of variations to Chexx, but in the base version of it, the new type is chosen randomly. However, the randomization is constrained by the game's value-cap rule. The engine first determines all legal piece types that would keep the side under its configured value cap, then randomly selects one of those outcomes.

For example, if turning a piece into a Queen would cause the side's total value to exceed the cap, Queen is simply excluded from the candidate set for that transmutation event.

The base sub-variant of CheXX is value-capped & each game can be identified by its cap as a tag.

Example: CheXX-VC-54

This means the total value of each side's pieces cannot exceed 54. Whenever a piece transmutes, the game computes all legal resulting piece types & randomly chooses among them. (Any outcome that would cause the side's total piece value to exceed the cap is excluded.)

For example, u can't have all seven of your Major/Minor pieces become Queens:

7 × 9 + 8 × 1 = 71 > 54

...therefore not allowed.

There could be additional sub-variants as well. For example:

• Minors can only transmute into other Minors.
• Majors can only transmute into other Majors.
• Players can choose the transmutation outcome instead of relying on randomness.

The physical version of the game requires a dice & at least two sets of chess pieces, so u can bring in on board 3 Knights if necessary. For now, we're only exploring the digital version.

How?

I've always wanted to develop an initial version of Chexx to bring it to life & play it against family & friends, since 2 yrs ago. Unfortunately I've been too busy to dedicate the required time & lock in to build & release it. Especially b/c as I just mentioned it's supposed to be targeted at a group of people that are not by default chess-lovers; so IMO it should have been shipped w/ commonly desired aesthetics of games; i.e. at least a 3D version.

The rule engine; which is just a variant of the default chess engine + a randomize feature, has never been the barrier. I'm also well versed in Three.js lib & ecosystem (RTF, ...) & the open elements has always been abundant. But, the permanent excuse of not having enough spare time, existed & persisted for past 2 years.

W/ LLMs becoming mature & growth of tooling around things changed for better. Code has become commodity. I as a SWE (Me as a SWE?! debate time!;-) ) have got more free time, both to build & more importantly maintain a project if the community finds it interesting.

Days ago, ayk, Anthropic release Fable & I thought it's the right time to embark on implementing Chexx; but it was suspended 3 days later. Tho, the urge to build in me didn't disappear this time. So I remained determined to build it.

TIL that a well designed Three.js game director skill for Claude is released. So jumped right into implementing a one-shot version of it today.

Wdyt?

Go give it a play & tell me how u feel about it. what other features u like the most to be added/changed to/in the game, from naming (Chexx?) to gameplay & features. As I told earlier, I'm available to maintain this for foreseeable future.