Below the Crown

Easily the best chess-themed game on Steam. Random generated chess endgames, no pawns and you are given options to reduce the randomness a little. If a round goes on long enough, the stage starts to shrink, think Fortnite. The game has powers, spells and unique units that aren't in chess. Scratches most of my chess itches but it looks like run difficulty will climb very fast. Would also be nice if there was a more casual experience that then ramped into the current version. I think this game would be more popular if you could play it with even less brainpower and be more of a dopamine rush. Wishlist or get on sale.

Incredible game design and fantastic atmosphere. Sadly took just 10 minutes for it to crash due to a memory leak on linux, which was supposed to be fixed in the latest patch :/

An interesting game. Built on the scaffolding of chess but with rules and objectives altered enough to require a new way of thinking about the pieces and how to utilize them. Queens have a handicap knocking them down to being about equal in value with rooks and bishops. Kings can move into check as long as the game will be won by doing so. The board is always changing in shape and layout. The pieces can have special abilities drastically changing their effectiveness. Overall it is a fun and worthwhile experience. There is some room for improvement to the interface ( special abilities don't have unique icons on the pieces requiring a hover to see what they do - and often these drastically change how they should be used ) and a couple inconsistencies in pieces that add for confusion. ( like the queen losing her handicap but only when she is your chosen king ) But what I found was that all of these changes in behavior and rules provides a challenging strategy game where you will find yourself thinking carefully on what your best move/action combo is going to be at every turn. Sometimes the choices are obvious and the round is simplistic. Other times it takes careful thought the whole way through. But it will seldom be a situation of doing the same thing you did last time.