Game Info
Year
2025
Players
2
Age
10+
Playtime
45 min
Collection
Ratings
Creator Score
Mechanic profile
Not enough video data yet
Vibe profile
Not enough video data yet
Description
Traditional chess played with a deck of 256 special cards that introduce unusual moves like moving your King like a Knight or warping your Queen to break memorized positions
Featured Videos
Ask a Rules Question
All mentions
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 3
This page: 3
Sentiment:
pos 1 ·
mix 0 ·
neu 0 ·
neg 2
Showing 1–3 of 3
Video _DCXLCa2cV4
The Dice Tower Review at 0:07 sentiment: negative
video_pk 128409 · mention_pk 365218
Click to watch at 0:07 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
negative
Pros
none
Cons
- Doesn't do enough for the reviewer.
- Chess is better than this game.
- Difficult and hard to parse rules.
- Requires looking up rulebook frequently.
- Can be tricky if you don't know chess.
Thematic elements
- Chess variant
Comparison games
- Innovation
- Nightmare Chess
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card-driven actions — You're going to get one of these cards at the end of your turn that's face up in front of you. And if you can play this card on your next turn, you get the amount of points that it shows on this card.
- Set Collection — if you get 800 points, you win.
- Variable player powers — And if you can play this card on your next turn, you get the amount of points that it shows on this card.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- I was interested in this one cuz I love taking chess and messing with it.
- The keywords are difficult and hard to parse.
- But the game is wacky without being wacky.
- And yeah, this this just doesn't do enough for me. Uh I didn't enjoy it.
- I think chess is better than this.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video mzrYFB26DRE
The Dice Tower Review at 3:36 sentiment: negative
video_pk 122054 · mention_pk 351160
Click to watch at 3:36 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
negative
Pros
- Intriguing concept of messing with chess.
- Can teach chess to new players.
- Has some cool ideas.
Cons
- Keywords are difficult and hard to parse.
- Requires looking up rules frequently.
- Doesn't feel as 'wacky' or fun as it could.
- The randomness of cards may frustrate optimization-focused players.
- Doesn't do enough for the reviewer.
- Chess is better than this game.
Thematic elements
- Chess variant
Comparison games
- Nightmare Chess
- Innovation
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card Play — Players draw and play cards that grant points or allow special moves.
- chess variant — Takes the core game of chess and adds Joker cards that modify gameplay.
- Objective Fulfillment — Players aim to complete card objectives for points, or achieve checkmate.
- Point Salad — Victory is achieved by reaching 800 points, gained through various card objectives or checkmating.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- Six games I played so you don't have to.
- This is a historical card game from Steve Easton World Within Games, but I was surprised to find out that this was supposed to be delivered from Kickstarter in October of 2015.
- The iconography is not particularly good. Attacking is unfun and boring.
- It's a forgettable product in many ways. It's a five a four out of 10 for me, actually.
- But the game is wacky without being wacky.
- First of all, it feels generic. Yeah, it's Harry Potter, we get it.
- But the theme for me actively is annoying because it looks so cool it doesn't really come through.
- So, it's has a bunch of cool ideas in it, but it's so forgetful.
- But it is a slow tower defense game. It's just really slow, very thoughtful, and so much effort going in.
- It's really quite boring, unfortunately.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video zzrLUjH7pUo
Bower's Game Corner Top List at 1:57 sentiment: positive
video_pk 106033 · mention_pk 305685
Click to watch at 1:57 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Designed by Carl Chudyk, known for highly rated games.
- Appeals to chess fans with a unique twist.
Cons
- Host notes that Nightmare Chess, a similar game, was hard to balance.
Thematic elements
- Turns the classic game of chess on its head
Comparison games
- Nightmare Chess
- Glory to Rome
- Innovation
- Red 7
- Panda Spin
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card-driven chess variant — Features 256 unique cards that modify the classic game of chess.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- There's a mystery to solve with Scooby and the gang in the social deduction game.
- One of those games you can pick up for 20 bucks and you bring it back and people are like, "Oh my gosh, you pick up the greatest games when you go to Gen Con."
- It's so fun.
- I know next to nothing about this game, but I am excited.
- That looks awesome.
- I'm only excited about this for one reason, it's in the tiny box.
- It's a game where you are going to rip, crumble, fold, and twist a small piece of paper.
- It's really cool. You have this 3D puzzle in front of you that you are looking at, and you are going to be you holding it kind of like a steering wheel, and then picking it up and rotating it 90 degrees.
- If you're one of those people who's like, "Yeah, I love trick-taking games. I like trick-taking games and I just have a whole big collection of trick-taking games because all of as long as it does something slightly different."
- And you have me at universal expansion.
- This side game has the unique ability to impact the other game point-wise and stuff like that.
- I love Vampire Survivors.
- It's Emerson Matsuuchi, who is quickly moving up the ranks as one of my favorite game designers of all time.
- The bottom line is it's two-player Werewolf. I'm just intrigued at that, quite frankly.
- We tried it in the press room. We're like, "Wow, this game is super sticky great."
- Now there's a version which you don't have to feel gross when a card comes up about.
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Showing 1–3 of 3