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Chess is immediately more fun if you jettison most of the rules and replace them with weapons-grade Game Boy Advance

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Chess is immediately more fun if you jettison most of the rules and replace them with weapons-grade Game Boy Advance

I have never been particularly good at The Game of Kings, but I do love when an indie developer turns their talents to turning chess into something more funky. Shotgun King stole my heart a few years ago, and now Rulehouse is looking to offer its own spin on the classic.

Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh, Ted, and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it's the canon height of Thief's Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.

In a generous demo covering the first act of the game, Rulehouse presents a Wario Ware spin on things⁠—in multiple ways. Each level introduces at least one new mechanic or modifier you have to keep track of, starting with the basic "pawns only, first one to the other side of the board wins," and ramping up to a simulated prison break where guards are firing on your pieces, and you have to get your king⁠—here the game's protagonist in a prison jumpsuit⁠—to the exit.

The escalation in complexity had me genuinely scratching my head, stumped at how to proceed at a few points. Rulehouse eschews trad chess pieces as much as possible, only introducing bishops and kings by the very end of the demo⁠—and stubbornly insisting on calling knights "cows" along the way.

Instead, you get stuff like "ice pawns" that shatter on taking an opponent's piece, or "poison pawns" that bring down the opponent's piece with them when they're captured.


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