VIBES.DIY CHESS VARIANTS LAB · six playable apps
Chess Variants Lab

The board
is just
one assumption.

Six chess apps that each break a different rule: standard 8×8 coverage, toroidal wrap-around, hexagonal Glinski rules, 3D multi-layer, AI opponent, position scanner. Clone any, remix to your variant.

Apps
Six
Genre
Strategy / Puzzle
Persistence
Saved as you play
Skin
Tournament Hall
The Variant Suite
01
Live

Coverage Chess

Eight-by-eight. How few pieces cover every square?

Classic chess piece placement puzzle on a standard 8×8 board. Choose your goal: cover all squares with minimum pieces, pack in the maximum non-attacking configuration, or experiment freely in sandbox mode. Piece-type restrictions, block limits, leaderboard by configuration. Your best solutions are saved, and the leaderboard is open to everyone with the link.

chess-duel
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want it seeded for a specific piece type challenge — queens only, or knights only? Clone it and restrict the palette.

02
Live

Toroidal Chess

The board folds into a donut. Rules stay sharp.

Coverage puzzle on a toroidal board: top edge connects to bottom, left connects to right. A rook on a1 attacks h1. A bishop's diagonal wraps continuously. The usual minimum-coverage answers don't apply here — fewer pieces can cover more when they attack through the wrap. Adjustable board size, piece restrictions, AI hint on demand.

chess-toroidal
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want a different wrap geometry — cylinder (horizontal only) instead of torus? Clone it and remove the vertical wrap from the attack logic.

03
Live

Hex Coverage

Glinski's rules. Six directions. Different geometry.

Piece placement puzzle using Glinski's hexagonal chess movement rules on a configurable hex board. Rooks move along 6 orthogonal axes, bishops along 6 diagonals, knights leap to distance-3 hexes. Ferz and Wazir pieces round out the toolset. Four goal modes, leaderboard by board radius, JSON solution export. Hover any piece to see its attack pattern.

chess-hex-coverage
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want it restricted to just queens and knights — the most asymmetric hex cover problem? Clone it and lock the piece palette.

04
Live

3D Chess

Depth as a real axis. Pieces attack vertically.

Chess across multiple stacked boards rendered in 3D. Bishops can ascend through layers. Rooks control columns through the full vertical stack. A queen at layer 0 threatens all layers simultaneously. The opening theory does not yet exist. Coverage goals, attack visualization, adjustable board dimensions across all three axes.

chess-3d
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want it as a pure two-player game instead of a puzzle? Clone it and replace the goal system with turn-based move tracking.

05
Live

AI Match

It doesn't forget your blunders.

Full chess against an AI opponent — Light vs. Dark. En passant, castling, promotion, all standard rules. The AI generates moves from the current position. No clocks by default: play at your own pace. The game saves as you play, so you can close the tab and come back to the same position, and anyone you send the link to can watch the board.

chess-vs-ai
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want it with time controls or ELO-style difficulty tuning? Clone it and add a timer state and difficulty parameter to the AI prompt.

06
Live

Position Scanner

Point camera. Get lines.

Take a photo of any chess position — tournament board, book diagram, puzzle page, or screen grab. The app reads the position using vision AI, converts to FEN notation if possible, and returns a strategic analysis: material count, tactical themes, candidate moves, and a plain-English assessment of who's better. Useful for post-game review and puzzle study.

chess-scanner
Play Clone Remix
// start fresh from this prompt — describe your variant

Want it to output Stockfish-ready FEN for further engine analysis? Clone it and add a FEN copy button and stockfish.wasm integration.

On Variants

Standard chess has been played for five hundred years. Every rule you know is a choice someone made. Eight by eight: a choice. Flat board: a choice. Edges that stop pieces: definitely a choice. These six apps explore what happens when you don't accept those choices — when the board wraps, when it gets a third axis, when the squares become hexagons.

Coverage puzzles — the first three apps — are underrated as chess study tools. They force you to think about how pieces interact in the abstract, without the pressure of an opponent. Clone any of these and describe your variant. A queen-only toroidal coverage puzzle is four lines of change away. Ask for two players and the board takes each move from the player whose turn it is, while anyone with the link watches.