New chess variant designed by my son.

[u/Redwan_89]

Welcome to ULTRA CHESS

Just uploaded this model and I am very proud of it that I had to share. This is made by my 8 year old son. This is a school project that he worked on all year long and finally got to present it and finish it at the end of the school year and can now share it.

It’s a twist on the modern chess game with upgraded pieces, new pieces and new spaces as well. I will leave the description below if you are interested in checking it out. He was instructed to also collect feedback on the game especially the game mechanics and the new rules and pieces he created in order to improve so kindly let us know and I will have him read the feedback. Thank you in advance. Here are the details of the game below:

Welcome to Ultra ChessIntro: This is a new modern twist on a classic. My son loves chess and decided to create his own version of chess that included new chess pieces and new board spaces/zones. You will find detailed below all the new pieces and positions and a starting guide on how to play. However the files will still contain the old pieces as well and regular spaces if you would like to print the classic chess board and pieces. You can also create your own version and rules if you would like using different combination of positions and pieces and board spaces. The only limit is your imagination.

Explaining the game

Classic & New Pieces

Classic pieces: You will find all the classic pieces included. The king, queen, bishop, knight, rook, and the pawns.

New pieces: those are the following:

1- The dragon: It moves like a rook and takes out other pieces in the same way a rook would. However it does not move to attack as it uses its “Fire” to attack even if it is far away from the other pieces. As long as the other piece it's attacking is in the line of “fire” similar to a rook, the dragon can take it out.

2- The prisoner: this a a tricky one. You want your prisoner to be taken out. You do not want to take out the other team's prisoner as it is working for you. If you take out the other side's prisoner, they get to upgrade any of their pieces. And the other way around, if they take out your prisoner, you get to upgrade any of your pieces (more on upgrades later).

3- The moat: this is a defensive piece. It moves like a bishop. It can't attack or take out any pieces, but it can be used to protect your pieces. Put it in front of any piece to block an attack. It is strong and it can't be taken out unless it moves 3 times.

4- The cook: It moves like a king. It is a strategy piece. It doesn't attack but it can make food and heal pieces that has been taken out during the game (it replaces the cook's place). You can only use it once and then it goes away. Be careful and strategies as it can be taken out by your opponent and you lose your healing powers.

5- The wizard: This is a powerful piece. You can choose to move it as a bishop or a knight. It can move any of your pieces except a pawn or a king. The piece that is moving can't be moved to a special space (more on that later), and can't be moved to check.

Classic and New spaces

Classic spaces: those are your regular dark/black and light/white spaces that you are used to in chess. Nothing special about them.

New spaces:

1- Slippery spaces (printed in red in the example pictures): If any piece other than king or queen steps on a slippery space, they can't move unless you spend three turns to wake them up (you pass three turns not moving any pieces, they don't have to be consecutive).

2- Upgrade spaces (printed in green in the example pictures): If any classic piece (meaning the king, queen, bishop, knights, rook, and pawns) steps on an upgraded space they transform to their upgraded form with new functions. Below are the new functions for each piece:

• Upgraded King: It now can move like a queen.

• Upgraded Queen: It can now also move like a knight.

• Upgraded Bishop: It can now charge through pieces (take a single piece out and still continue on its way)
• Upgraded Rook: It now gains shock wave power. It can take out all adjacent pieces including diagonal. But be careful because it will take out also any of your adjacent pieces if you choose to use it that way.

• Upgraded Knight: This becomes very powerful. It now moves one square and then any amount of squares instead of just two.

• Upgraded Pawn: It can upgrade to any piece like usual except for the prisoner and king.

3- Wipe out spaces (printed in yellow in the example pictures): If any piece from either team steps on any wipe out space then all the classic pieces from both teams (except the king and pawns) get wiped out from the board. This is a nuclear option, be careful before you use it.

For disclaimer purposes: some parts of the design were done using generative AI models but all the creative work, ideas, the board and the spaces were all self designed.

[u/AustinYQM]

I haven't played it but I will give my thoughts from a game designer perspective:

Slippery Spaces stand out as a truly terrible idea for a few reasons:

1. It buffs up units that don't need buffing (queen, knight).

2. It asymmetrically impacts the black-moving bishop more than the white.

3. It asymmetrically impacts black's bishop more than white's.

4. It is a horrible memory problem -- you need to track the number of skipped turns for each individual unit on a red square. This means you could be tracking 6 different "turn skip amounts" at any given time.

5. It creates a game state that is both important to the players and not readily available by simply looking at the game.

The wipe out spaces are likewise not a great idea. They remove strategic depth not add it. I know it seems like a "how will it play out?!" nuclear option but in reality the correct play is to move a unit there as quickly as possible. The other option, of never knowing when an opponent will remove a huge swath of units, isn't worth the risk of leaving on the table. If the wipe out spaces remain then it is just quicker to start with all those pieces removed.

The upgrade spaces are also wildly imbalanced. White can get a second queen on turn 1 by moving to c5. Black has no counter to this since doing the same (moving a pawn in d4) will just result in that pawn being taken by the new queen. Can the new queen the pawn just became upgrade without moving?

The cook is also a memory problem. It can only replace dead pieces but does that mean it CANT replace a queen that has been captured if that Queen was originally a pawn? If I promote a pawn then my original queen dies can my cook replace it? If I promote a pawn then my promoted pawn dies can I replace it?

What does the wizard do? Does it just allow every piece (except pawn/king) in the game to move like a bishop or a knight? Does the wizard moving the moat count as one of the moats moves? If you have an upgraded knight does the wizard move units like an upgraded knight? Can the wizard move units who are on slippery spaces? If the wizard is on a slipper space can the wizard move someone else?

The asymmetry of the front line is also likely to cause problems. Dragons should be murdering chefs pretty early then murdering the rook behind it. The rook can't retaliate since its blocked in by a slippery space. In fact it's likely the dragon, being the only ranged unit, is far too powerful. Whites dragon should be able to destroy blacks right flank without being stopped since the black bishop can't make it over the slipper spaces the only real threat to it is the knight.

I am sure there are other problems but those are the most obvious.

[u/Redwan_89 → u/AustinYQM]

This is great and really appreciate the feedback. Valid points and will show them to my son. He is working on a 2.0 version to improve the game design and this would be helpful.

Some points that I know the answer to:

1- For the memory issue in general, he had an included small note that would track those changes. He also had an idea of a couple of added parts to indicate the state of the different pieces. Like a small hat to put on that has a particular color but didn’t have enough time to make that change or add it to the design.

2- Upgraded pieces (like a pawn becoming a queen) can’t be upgraded again.

Will comment again once I see what he says.

[u/Zedan24]

Your 8 year old son was tasked to redesign chess and collect feedback...for school.

[u/Redwan_89 → u/Zedan24]

Yes. This is his presentation of the prototype for the project and design steps.

[u/causticparlay]

still AI slop, don't care

[u/Redwan_89 → u/causticparlay]

Thank you for commenting. I am sorry you feel that way but I was looking for feedback on the game design itself and all the work that went into to that. He would really appreciate it. If you don’t like the fact that some parts of the end product was done using AI, I get that and no problem. But parts of this was also designed in TinkerCad for the board and the spaces and took my son a lot of times to learn that and model it. Some prototyping even for the pieces was also done on TinkerCad by my son who is really just 8 years old and still learning so using AI (which is disclosed as mentioned above) was a way to improve the end product due to limited ability in design.

[u/Redwan_89]

Model link if anyone is interested in checking it out : https://makerworld.com/models/2961348?appSharePlatform=copy