Echo Chess: chess variant where you are what you eat

Hey everyone, check out this new chess variant I made: echochess.com

It's a single-player chess puzzle, you are what you eat, and your goal is to clear the board.

It's always your turn but any piece you have is only useful for one capture because you'll be constantly morphing into others (e.g. if Q takes p, your Q itself becomes P). So the move order matters a lot or you won't be able to clear all pieces.

Echo Chess has 3 game modes:

1. Daily Classic - new easy puzzle released every 24 hrs
2. Daily Epic - new harder(er) puzzle released every 24 hrs
3. Zen Mode - make the longest chess combos with Tetris-like infinite play

If you're curious about how any of this is built, I'm more than happy to share or answer any questions. TL;DR for Zen Mode: it's procedural gen using a supervised learning ML model I built for Echo Chess, by training on a custom codec dataset inspired by FEN notation. Can share more if there's interest.

Play the game here: echochess.com 

I'll be continuously improving on it so any feedback from the community is always super welcome! This is a one-person passion project that I've put endless hours into. If you like what you see and want to support me in this endeavor, feel free to make an account, take a few Echo puzzles for a spin, and share with any of your chess friends. The community support is what keeps me going

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* Game rules / How to play Echo Chess:

You're playing white. Black pieces don't move
You drag a white piece to move it to a valid square
You transform into any piece you capture
You can't pass through dark red walls
Pawns don't promote, no en passant, castling, etc.

interesting mechanic, are you sure the puzzle is solvable in 21 moves? i tried taking f6 instead of c7 but still at 28 moves

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (E)

🤴🏻🫅🏻🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️✅🟨
✅✅🟨🟨✅🟨
✅✅🟨🟨⬜️🟨
⬜️✅🟨⬜️✅⬜️
✅✅✅✅✅✅

3:48 sec
5/8 tries
28 moves

@happyplace995 thanks! If you're referring to today's EPIC puzzle, yes. The best solution (so far) only uses 21 moves. Won't share spoilers to not ruin the puzzle but to give you a hint: you seem to be on the right track. See if you can walk your way back from what looks like an 'end state' piece in this board. Is there a more efficient way to do your backtrack from there?

Got it, thanks.

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (E)

🤴🏻🫅🏻🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
✅✅✅✅✅✅

0:39 sec
1/8 tries
21 moves

Nice! If you're looking for a deeper challenge, check out the Mar-15 puzzle in the archives

Congrats!

I like this approach. I can see this having a lot of potential. Took me a minute to get used to the single player part without worrying about checks but when I built the right intuition for that the game became extremely interesting. Are these puzzle algorithmically generated or manually designed? They look very well crafted.

This is super fun!

I tried one level and ended up playing 10! Very fun game. I like how easy it is to play in my spare time.

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (E)

🤴🏻🫅🏻🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
✅⬜️⬜️⬜️✅🟨
✅✅🟨🟨✅✅
✅✅✅✅✅✅

3:18 sec
3/8 tries
26 moves

So great to finally have a score sharing mechanic! Love the three modes. Wish we could change board color "skin". What a cool game! Can't wait for a PvP version

@Ozymandias1991 thanks! let me know if you have any questions or need any hints in the daily puzzles

Wow, that was really great. The infinite mode is fantastic!

Thanks! Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions for future releases

Great suggestion, thanks! Will keep in mind for the next version for sure

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (E)

🤴🏻🫅🏻🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
⬜️✅🟨🟨✅⬜️
✅⬜️⬜️⬜️✅🟨
✅✅🟨🟨✅✅
✅✅✅✅✅✅

4:49 sec
4/8 tries
24 moves

I've been playing chess for a long time, and I've been a lurker on these forms for just as long and this game is incredibly addicting.

The zen mode is something I didn't know I needed.

Well done OP

Ah so much to love - not just the game and mechanics, but the cool music and vibe too. Thanks for the share! I've got a loooooooooong way to grind to GM so this will be fun to dive into as a companion along the way

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (C)

🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
✅✅✅✅

0:48 sec
1/8 tries
9 moves

And now I just got the Epic too. WHERE ARE YOU MAGNUS!?! WE CHALLENGE YOU TO THIS!!

ECHO CHESS
Mar 18 (E)

🤴🏻🫅🏻🏰🙅🏻🐴♟️
✅⬜️🟨⬜️⬜️🟨
✅✅✅✅✅✅

1:16 sec
2/8 tries
21 moves

Loved the concept!

Regarding the UI, it may be better to have a tap - tap kinda moves (instead of swipe) and for Zen mode may also be better if the time could start with the first move (cause it takes a bit of time to Load)

Thanks a lot for this Gem 😊