Galactic Chess Invaders

A real game of chess plays out on screen — legal moves, real check and checkmate, a live engine playing Black. Except Black's pieces are also a fleet, sweeping sideways, dropping a rank at a time, and shooting at you. You play both halves at once. The mouse commands White's pieces. The keyboard flies a laser ship along the bottom of the board. A five-second clock runs on every move. Reflex decides whether you survive; the chess decides what you are surviving against. The two halves are genuinely entangled. Shoot a black piece and it leaves the chess position. Let one descend onto your rook and the rook is gone. Checkmate the black king to clear the wave — or just shoot it. Walk a pawn to the eighth rank and you promote it and upgrade your guns at the same time, which is the one moment the game asks you to do both jobs in the same second. TEN WAVES, TEN IDEAS Each level introduces a mechanic rather than a difficulty multiplier. Pawns start shooting back. Black takes two chess moves a turn, then three. The fleet's sweep widens. Bishops open fire along the diagonal. Regenerated pawns arrive armoured and shrug off lasers. The black king raises a forcefield and draws a weapon of its own. Then Blitz — the last wave, which takes most of your advantages away and drops the clock to three seconds. POWER-UPS Shoot the green scouts that drift across the board and you will pick up rapid fire, a gatling burst, a shield, a freeze, or a nuke. Your laser cap rises as you go and resets with each wave. MADE FOR GAMERS, NOT CHESS PLAYERS You do not need to be good at chess. If you pick a piece it will show the legal moves. The engine plays fast and shallow on purpose, the clock is short enough that nobody is calculating, and Cadet mode gives you a longer clock, a slower pace, five lives and power-ups that carry between levels. WHAT ELSE IS IN THERE • Ten levels, each with a distinct mechanic • Cadet and standard difficulty • An original soundtrack — a track per level, escalating with the waves • Full arcade audio from Zudio • A board grid you can dial from open space up to named rows and columns • A nebula backdrop that deepens as the waves get harder, or switch it off • Local high score table • Universal binary, native on Apple Silicon and Intel • No ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts, no data collected FORTY YEARS IN THE MAKING The first version was written in 1983 on an Apple II, in Applesoft BASIC using the TASC compiler to make it fast enough to be playable. This is that game, rebooted, refueled and remade for the modern era.