Kingdom Chess - New Chess Based Game

Hello Chess.com Members!

My name is Robert Salmond. I am a chess player and an inventor from Alberta Canada.

I have spent a good part of the last three years developing a new chess-based strategy game called Kingdom Chess that I am launching this autumn.

Kingdom Chess is not a Chess variation and would more appropriately be called a Chess Expansion because it starts where traditional chess ends. 

We started by designing a four sided board that would allow up to four players to play against each other in the same game and then created six new characters/pieces for each player with entirely new moves and attacks. 

Here is a diagram of a Kingdom Chess board set for 4:

The board design was inspired by the Castles of old and have integrated hidden passages in the four corners that are hidden behind boulders and can only be opened from the inside by pushing the boulder out, or from the outside by the newly introduced Demolition Specialist. These passages offer a last minute escape for a King under siege, or for a well played strategy, offer a point of entrance for a deadly offensive into the soft underbelly of an opponent.

With the exception of the pawn (who may move towards any active opponent in the East or West, but never back towards home) all the Traditional rules of Chess remain intact for the traditional pieces as you know them... that is, until a Checkmate is declared. Unlike traditional Chess, where the capture of a King is not actually performed and the game ends, the newly introduced Prince (if he hasn't been captured himself) can reclaim the throne of his fallen father to rule your Kingdom for another day, but it doesn't come easy. Once your King is captured (the capture move is completed in Kingdom Chess and he is removed from the board) your Kingdom will slip into chaos without it's leader and the Prince will be the only piece you can move until he is able to traverse the board back to where the King fell and take his place as the new King. If you can get him back, gameplay continues as normal again, but if this new king is put in checkmate it truly is the end of the game for you.

The other Characters/pieces we've introduced with Kingdom Chess are:

The Princess, is the lover and peace maker. Her single square moves and inability to attack make her the least threatening piece in the game, unless she is able to capture an opponent Prince. Should she capture herself a handsome prince in 3 and 4 player games, she will force an alliance between those two players.

The Spectres (spirits/magic) never move from their starting position and serve to either extend the moves of any other piece in their own kingdom by adding an extra straight or diagnol move to any piece in that is able to land on it in that same turn (It essentially gives you two turns in one), or to resurrect a captured piece (except a King or Prince). However, they can only be used once per game and are removed from the board once used.

The Assassin and Demolition Specialist are covert pieces with deadly attacks. To all other players, they look and move like regular pawns and can only be identified by a symbolic marking hidden under their base (or by the fact that they are unable to attack like a pawn). The Assassin's goal is to embed itself in an opponent's Kingdom. Once in an opponent's Kingdom (and only when it is inside) it adopts the legal movment of any piece to make an attack on a member of the Royal Family (King, Queen, Prince or Princess), but once used, is sacrificed and removed from the board. The Demolition Specialist's special attack is to set off the bomb (only on the Battlefield) to remove boulders from the entrances of caves/hidden passages at  or to remove the walls that block off the entrance of a Kingdom that doesn't have a player (in 2 & 3 Player games). He can also use this special attack to kill/capture all pieces in the eight squares surrounding himself.

The last piece to introduce are the Spiders (or Dragons/Beasts). These deadly pieces move in a straight zig-zag pattern that allows them to quickly move across a crowded gameboard. They have the reach of a Rook or Queen and can move from one end of the board to the other in one move if the path is clear. They attack where they land.

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One of the best features of Kingdom Chess is that the centre of the board (the Battlefield) is a standard 64 square chess board and because the game includes all of the traditional chess pieces, players will be able to play traditional chess on the same gameboard.

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The finished game we will be launching this autumn will be made completely out of Canadian Soft and Hard wood (Basic & Premium) and will feature solid carved game pieces and a full-color saddle-bound rulebook with in-depth descriptions and diagrams to make learning to play Kingdom Chess easy and fun. Currently, we are setting up our shop to manufacture Kingdom Chess and are in the process of equiping ourselves with the machines and tools needed to do this. However, we do have a simple prototype that we've been playing the game on and will be releasing video of gameplay very soon.

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One of the reasons I've come to chess.com, aside from my hope that I can get chess enthusiasts interested in this very exciting game, is to get some initial feedback from people like you who are already very serious about Chess.

We have no intentions of trying to replacing Chess (Like that could ever happen) or of even trying to be better than Chess. We have always seen Kingdom Chess as being it's own game with it's own challenges and gameplay. Even as the creators, we still enjoy playing traditional chess like we always have.

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We've still got a long road to go, considering we only have our prototype, our completely written rulebook and nearly 100GB of custom graphics, so we're attempting to get to the manufacturing level by raising our start-up capital from people like You using crowdsourcing on Indiegogo.com. We hope that you will take this opportunity to check out our campaign page which has more in-depth information: http://igg.me/at/kingdom-chess 

Since I just discovered chess.com, I am excited to play some chess on here and will be sticking around. I hope that you will be willing to share your honest opinions with us in this thread and make us a part of your community.

Cheers,

Robert Salmond

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For anyone interested in Kingdom Chess, we have just posted the Draft rulebook online in a .PDF file: http://kingdom-chess.com/rules/KingdomChessRulesDRAFT.pdf

Please take this opportunity to check it out and see just how awesome Kingdom Chess really is.

This game is built for chess players and strategists looking for more. The extensive size and complexity of Kingdom Chess opens up a whole new world of possibilities for players to show off their skills.

Hi, I am a huge fan of the Kingdom Chess app. It's a lot of fun but quite a few bugs. I have been playing for a few months now and have come across quite a few games in which I have won with a checkmate but the game is declared a draw and does not show in the Tower to review. Not sure if this is a bug or a hack? Who can I report this to?