No turns. No check. No mercy.
How to play GUNCHESS
It is chess, in real time, and the pieces are armed. Nobody waits for a turn. Everything below is how the game actually behaves — the numbers are the ones the engine runs on.
The only way to win
Kill the enemy King. That is the whole victory condition. If both Kings die, the match is a mutual destruction — a draw.
There is no check, no checkmate, and no stalemate. Nothing warns you that your King is in danger, nothing stops you moving it into a firing lane, and no rule forbids leaving it exposed. Guarding it is entirely your job.
Nobody takes turns
The board advances twenty times a second and both sides act at once. You do not wait for an opponent; you wait for cooldowns.
- Every match opens with a 3 second countdown. No command is accepted until it ends.
- Each piece has a move cooldown and a separate gun cooldown, both counting down in real time.
- A piece slides between squares rather than teleporting. It is shootable the whole way.
- Once you commit a move you cannot call it back. Only death stops a piece in transit.
- Ammunition never regenerates. What a piece starts with is what it has for the entire match.
Controls
| Input | Does |
|---|---|
| Left click / tap | Select one of your pieces, or move it to a highlighted square |
| Right click / hold | Fire the selected piece at that point |
| Esc | Cancel a rook's charge, then deselect |
| S | Raise your King's shield — finds your King for you |
| V | Arm the explosive vest; press again to bring the blast forward |
| Q R B N | Choose what the selected pawn promotes into |
| P | Pause — solo play only |
You do not have to aim precisely. Click roughly where you mean and the shot snaps to the nearest lane that piece can actually fire along.
Moving
Pieces move exactly as they do in chess — including castling and en passant. Castling is issued as an ordinary two-square King move; both pieces slide at once and both can be shot on the way. There are no check-related restrictions on it.
Arriving on an occupied enemy square kills whatever is standing there. That is a melee kill, and it is the one attack in the game that cannot hurt your own side — and the one the King's shield cannot stop.
An en passant window stays open for 1 second after a pawn's double step, on the square it skipped.
A pawn reaching the far rank promotes. The default is a queen, but with a pawn selected you can press Q, R, B or N to set its choice ahead of time, per pawn. A promoted piece gets a full magazine and its gun is live immediately.
The weapons
| Piece | Weapon | Ammo | Gun cooldown | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pawn | Point-defense — forward diagonals only | 6 | 1.2 s | about 2 diagonal squares |
| Knight | Explosive lob — no line of fire needed | 3 | 5 s | 2 squares, any direction |
| Bishop | Diagonal rifle — fast and very quick to re-fire | 3 | 0.12 s | unlimited, 4 diagonals |
| Rook | Railgun — charges before it fires | 2 | 20 s | unlimited, 4 orthogonals |
| Queen | Omni rifle | 8 | 2 s | unlimited, all 8 lines |
| King | Royal rifle | 6 | 3 s | unlimited, all 8 lines |
Friendly fire is always live. Bullets, grenades, railgun beams and the vest kill your own pieces exactly as readily as the enemy's. Only a melee capture checks whose piece it is.
Things worth knowing
- Bullets shoot each other down. Two bullets that meet in flight both die — including two of your own.
- The bishop is a sniper. Its round travels more than twice as fast as anyone else's and it can fire roughly eight times a second — but it carries only three, and it moves at half speed.
- The knight's grenade cannot be intercepted. It lands 0.8 seconds later and kills the target square plus the four squares orthogonally around it — a plus, not a block. It will kill the knight that threw it.
- The railgun announces itself. Charging takes 1.5 seconds and the lane is drawn for both players. When it fires it kills everything on that line — bodies do not block it. A charging rook cannot move, and backing out costs 4 seconds.
- Only the rook must stand still to shoot. Everyone else can fire mid-slide.
The King's two tricks
Each is usable once per match. There is no second charge.
Shield — S
For 2 seconds the King absorbs one lethal hit of ranged damage — a bullet, a grenade, a railgun beam, a blast — and then it is gone. It stops exactly one. It does not stop a piece walking onto the King's square, and there is no visible effect: the only sign it worked is that your King is still alive.
Explosive vest — V
Pressing V arms a fuse on your own King. Arming is committing — there is no disarm, and it will go off. You get 3 seconds, and pressing V again cuts that to 0.6 seconds. When it blows it kills everything in a 5×5 square around the King, your pieces included, and the King's own shield will not save it.
The fuse follows the King while he lives, and stays where he falls if he dies. Killing the wearer does not defuse it — and the match will not be declared over while a fuse is still burning. Your opponent can see the whole thing counting down.
Playing someone else
- Create a private room and send the invite link. No accounts, no lobby, no spectators.
- Colours are drawn at random. A rematch swaps them.
- If you drop, you have 30 seconds to get back before the seat is forfeit. Returning resumes the match after a 3 second countdown.
- The server owns the simulation, so both players always see the same board.