Magic Chess

How to play Magic Chess

Magic Chess is a strategy game inspired by "Castle Quest", a very entertaining Nintendo Game Boy game. The original was played on boards of any size and any shape, but my derivative is played on a 7x7 chess board. (Yes, I know a classic chess board is 8x8.)

Your goal

You play Magic Chess by moving your pieces around, capturing enemy pieces, and casting spells. These spells have different effects, depending on the magician. Your goal is to beat the enemy king. This can be achieved by capturing him or by killing him with a spell. This version of Magic Chess is played with the characters of "Diablo", an action RPG by Blizzard. The "king" in Magic Chess is Deckard Cain, an NPC (non-player character) of "Diablo".

Move indicators

Needless to say, it is important to know how the pieces can move. If you slide your mouse over the pieces on the board, a pop-up window will appear showing a so-called "move indicator", apart from other information about the piece. Move indicators look like this:

These neat little icons show how the pieces can move. The colors mean:

• GRAY: This represents a square, either empty or occupied by a piece.
• GREEN: This is the current position of the piece.
• RED: The piece can move here, no matter if this square is occupied by an enemy piece or not.
• YELLOW: The piece can move here only if it attacks an enemy piece on this square.
• BLUE: The piece can move here only if this square is empty.

The second move indicator is special because it belongs to a piece that can move unlimited in the shown directions. If a piece can move unlimited, this is always indicated separately.

No special moves

In Magic Chess, there is no check. That means, you can move your king (i.e. your Cain) on a square that is controlled by an enemy piece. In classic chess, this would be an illegal move. Also, castling does not exist, just as little as capturing en passant or promoting a piece on the last row.

HP and MP

Every piece has a specific amount of HP (hit points) and MP (magic points). If a piece wants to capture another, that piece with the higher HP will survive, but during the fight it will lose so much HP as the enemy piece had. The attacking piece gets an attack bonus of 1 HP so that the attacking piece will survive if both pieces have the same HP value.

If a piece wants to cast a spell, it needs 1 MP for doing so. If a piece has no MP left, it cannot conjure anymore.

About the playing strength of the CPU

Don't be surprised if the computer makes stupid moves. This game is rather a proof of concept than a serious attempt to write a strong AI, so its intelligence level is quite low. You should be able to beat the CPU in every match---if you aren't, please consult a doctor. Because of the extremely slow execution of PHP code, I cannot implement sufficient search depths on the web server to enable the CPU to compete with strong human players.

Acknowledgements

• the Diablo II icons by Dave Brasgalla from IconFactory
• the overLIB library by Erik Bosrup

Play the game!

Magic Chess is solely based on HTML, so you don't need any plug-ins. However, to see the piece information, you must have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

IMPORTANT: It may take 0.5 to 10 seconds for the CPU player to make its move. But if you encounter an "internal server error" or the game does not respond for about 20 seconds, then the server refused to execute the game code due to overload. In this case, please wait for a short while, click the "back" button in your browser and try your move (or whatever) again.

If you want to comment about Magic Chess, please contact me in the guestbook or by e-mail (especially if you encounter any bugs)!

I had a wonderful ending of a match on 30 Jun 2007 when my opponent honorably committed suicide when he had no chance to win the game. This is the last screen of the game:

And this is the save code of the game's last position:

NmY0N2U2ZjA5OGQ3YjcxMTgxMDk0ZmFlMTE2NmE4ZTQ1M2Y3Nzc4N3w4OjI5OjA7MzoyNT
owOzQ6NDA6MjszOjI1OjA7NTozMDoyOzM6MjY6MDsxOjE1OjA7MzoyNTowOzI6MzA6Mzsz
Oi0yNDowOzQ6NjoxOzM6MjU6MDs1OjY6MzszOjI1OjA7LTg6LTExOjI7LTM6MDowOy00Oj
M1OjI7LTM6MDowOy01OjE6MDstMzowOjA7LTE6MjowOy0zOjI1OjA7LTI6MjU6MDstMzoy
NTowOy00OjQwOjI7LTM6MjU6MDstNTo2OjM7LTM6MjU6MHwwOzA7MzswOzA7MDswOzI7MD
swOzc7MDswOzE0OzA7MDswOzA7MDswOzA7MDswOzA7MDswOzEyOzA7MDs0OzA7MDswOzI2
OzA7MDsxOzA7MDswOzA7Mjg7MDsxMTswOzA7MDswOzI1fDQxLjV8LTF8MXwwfDI5fDIyfD
B8MA==