Chesseract

Chess taken to the 4th dimension. Played on a 4x4x4x4 board, it includes all the traditional chess pieces, with a slightly different number. Each player has 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 4 bishops, 4 knights and 21 pawns. Players also have 3 types of fairy pieces: 2 unicorns (moving like a knight with an additional single cell right angle move), 2 wizards (moving like a bishop, but only to other levels in the 3rd & 4th dimensions) and 1 minstrel (a non-capturing piece, that moves like a rook and prevents orthogonally adjacent pieces from making a capturing move). Players take turns moving pieces one at a time, but a variant allows players 2 moves a turn to speed up the game. The goal is to checkmate the king.

Some of the traditional pieces have altered moves, beyond the 4 dimensional aspect. The king only moves and captures orthogonally one space. Pawns move orthogonally one space and captures diagonally one space. Rooks move and capture orthogonally, but also changes direction at a right angle once it meets a wall. Bishops move on 2D diagonals and on 3D or 4D diagonals (but not on the 2D diagonals of other levels). Knights move as chess knights. The Queen moves as a Chesseract rook or bishop.

One huge challenge in Chesseract is to try and envision moves in 4 dimensions. While each 2 dimensional level is only 4x4, learning to extend the moves beyond is a little brain-burning.

Chesseract was created by Jim Aikin