# Chessplosion: 3D Chess Duel — Aim, Throw, Topple the King

> Aim, Throw, Topple the King (iPhone/iPad app by Jonas Hoettler.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/chessplosion-3d-chess-duel/id6797901846 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Jonas Hoettler](https://appshunter.io/developer/1812395414)
- Category: Games, Board, Strategy
- Price: Free
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.0 · 22 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-08-07
- Data updated: 2026-09-09
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/chessplosion-3d-chess-duel/id6797901846/reviews.md

## What is Chessplosion?

Chess in 3D — plus a second mode you will not find anywhere else: capture a piece and you get to throw it back onto the board.

WHOEVER CAPTURES GETS TO THROW
The captured piece becomes the projectile, in the same turn or never. There is no ammo store: skip the throw and you lose the right to it. Otherwise whoever is ahead would hoard projectiles and the game would tip for good.

You throw from well behind your own back rank, not from the edge of the board. That is exactly where the difficulty comes from — the same small angular error grows across the distance into a wide miss. Drag to set direction and power, release to throw. Reaching all the way across the board is a gamble, not target practice.

NO FRIENDLY-FIRE PROTECTION
Your own pieces topple just as easily. Whoever leads gets more ammunition but risks their own position with every throw. Toppled means captured: tilted more than 45 degrees, or knocked off the board. Everything else slides back onto its square. A toppled king ends the game.

THREE DIFFICULTY LEVELS THAT CHANGE SOMETHING
The difference is not a number, it is how much you get to see.
- Easy: the full arc, and you pick the power freely.
- Normal: half the arc, and the power swings, so you have to release at the right moment.
- Hard: only the launch direction, a faster swing, plus crosswind you have to account for before you let go.

BALANE PLAY, IF YOU WANT IT
A leaderboard that counts the opponent pieces you have toppled: worldwide or friends only, for today, this week, this month or all time. Add friends by friend code or by name, report or block a player right where the name appears, delete the account again in two taps. One account across every Balane game. It is optional in the real sense — leave it alone and the game is complete without it.

OR JUST CHESS
The throwing mode is a switch, not an obligation. Leave it off and you get complete chess: castling, en passant, promotion, every draw rule. With a main menu, pause, saved games, replays and settings.

AN OPPONENT THAT CAN THROW, TOO
Play two people on one device, or against the built-in opponent in three strengths. It is a hand-written alpha-beta search with piece-square tables. It picks between several throwing targets rather than aiming at the king every single time, and it accounts for its own inaccuracy: a valuable target at the far edge gets left alone when the throw is too risky. It throws with the same ballistics you do — no engine privileges.

TWO PLAYERS, ONE DEVICE
The board turns to whoever is to move. Switch it off under Settings if you would rather it stayed put.

THE GAME STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
No ads, no tracking, no analytics. Saved games and replays never leave the device, the opponent thinks locally, and the whole game works on a plane. Balane Play is the one part that talks to a server, and only once you sign in: a name and a score for the leaderboard, an email address so you can get back in.

DETAILS
- Every piece is generated procedurally from a profile curve. No bought models.
- Figurine notation by default because it is language-neutral; letter notation per language is one switch away.
- The sound is synthesised from the actual physics impact, so a hard hit sounds like one.
- English and German.


## Version history (last 4 releases)

### 1.2.1 — 2026-09-08

Performance improvements and more stability throughout the game.

### 1.2 — 2026-09-05

CORRESPONDENCE GAMES — PLAY A FRIEND, MOVE BY MOVE
- Challenge someone from your friends list, or send an invitation link. The link works for a player who does not have the app yet.
- Turn by turn, not in real time. Nobody waits for the other one to come online — you move when you have a minute.
- Open a game and it goes straight to where you left off. You see your opponent's throw, not thirty moves you already know.
- After a throw both sides see exactly the same board: the result travels with the move instead of being simulated twice.
- One difficulty level for both sides, so the throw is the same job for each of you.
- It needs an identity, otherwise the other side does not know who they are playing. One tap is enough, no email address needed.
- Correspondence games do not count towards the leaderboard.

THE MAIN MENU SAYS WHAT IS RUNNING
- Your turn, a game with your opponent to move, or an invitation nobody has answered yet — the menu entry now says which, instead of counting only the moves you owe.

THE KING
- A toppled king is set back up while one of your own pieces still stands beside him. Only a bare king ends the game, so there is an order to play for: clear the guards first.
- Base radius and weight now come from a table per piece. The king was the wobbliest piece on the board — a throw landing anywhere in the back rank often decided the game by scatter rather than by aim.

ACCOUNT AND FRIENDS
- Signing up is an email address and a password. The name below it is optional, and Change name in the account view gets you out of an assigned one.
- Your own friend code and the field for someone else's now sit on the same screen. Reading yours out loud no longer means switching screens.
- A button that is working now shows it, instead of standing still for two seconds.

GETTING STARTED
- The rules of the throwing mode are in the game now, not only in the manual.
- The first game opens with a capture in the first move, so the first throw happens right away.
- The end screen shows the place this game would have taken on the leaderboard, with a button that saves it without leaving the screen.
- "Difficulty" means the throw, "Strength" means the opponent. They used to share one word.

MAC
- The window can be dragged, resized and zoomed again. The transparent title bar was swallowing the mouse in exactly the strip you grab a window by.

FIXED
- Scores never arrived. A signed-in player could finish a game and the leaderboard stayed empty — the session was being mangled in storage.
- Every refusal from the server read as "Balane Play is unreachable", including "that name is taken".
- Aiming on a phone held upright was unusable.
- Replays of the debris variant drifted apart: where the projectile came to rest was recomputed instead of replayed.

### 1.1 — 2026-08-23

BALANE PLAY — ONE ACCOUNT ACROSS EVERY BALANE GAME
- A leaderboard, worldwide or friends only, for today, this week, this month or all time. It counts the opponent pieces you have toppled.
- Add friends by friend code or by name.
- Report and block right where the name appears.
- Delete your account again in two taps.
- Or keep playing without one. The game is complete without an account.

THROWING
- Long throws now scatter far more. Reaching across the board is a gamble again, not target practice.
- More scatter on all three difficulty levels.

THE COMPUTER OPPONENT
- It no longer aims at the king every single time. It picks between several targets.
- It accounts for its own inaccuracy while aiming and leaves a valuable target at the edge alone when the throw is too risky.
- Computer and human now throw with the same ballistics.

TWO PLAYERS, ONE DEVICE
- The board turns to whoever is to move. Switch it off under Settings > Board.

FIXED
- On slow devices a throw could hang and leave the game stuck. It now always resolves.
- Damaged recordings can no longer upset the physics.

### 1.0 — 2026-08-13

No release notes.

## More apps by Jonas Hoettler

- [SynapseGym: Brain Test & Focus](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/synapsegym-brain-test-and-focus/id6747008971)
- [Off My Mind: Reflect & Vent](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/off-my-mind-reflect-and-vent/id6749179368)
- [SignaScan: Signature Creator](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/signascan-signature-creator/id6758831285)
- [GridBar: Tile Shelf & Macros](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/gridbar-tile-shelf-and-macros/id6760587777)
- [TextDeck - AI Prompt Templates](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/textdeck-ai-prompt-templates/id6761092608)
- [Hokd: Work Progress Journal](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hokd-work-progress-journal/id6761093616)

All apps by Jonas Hoettler: https://appshunter.io/developer/1812395414

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-09.*