The King's Game: Through the Veil

The King's Game: Through the Veil 

Chess has always assumed both players deserve to know everything. Now it is played in the dark, against an opponent who is equally lost.

Every piece on the board is hidden until your forces have eyes on it. The moment you lose line of sight, it disappears back into shadow. You are not playing against a system that knows where everything is. It genuinely does not know where your pieces are until it finds them. Your opening moves are an assumption. Your midgame is a deduction. Your endgame is a hunt.

This is chess stripped of its certainty. Every decision carries weight it never had before.

Three game modes across different atmospheric 3D environments:

• David's Duel — Standard chess. Classical board, classical rules, classical piece layout. Everything you know about chess still applies. The difference is you can only act on what you can see. Play against AI or a friend online across cave, winter, and desert environments.

• The Council— Three royal families. One circular board. Deliver the first checkmate and win.

  The Council draws from Byzantine Circle Chess, a variant with roots dating to the 6th century. The board is circular — five rings of 24 segments each, converging on a single bullseye at the center. Pawn promotion happens there. Three families — White, Yellow, and Red — occupy equal sections of the outer ring and advance inward toward the same center point.

  Movement adapts to the geometry. Rooks and queens travel radially between rings or circumferentially around them. Bishops slide diagonally along ring and segment lines. Knights keep their L-shape. Pawns advance inward and can move laterally along their ring on their first move.

• The Thronoi — Hexagonal Chess

   A mode built on Glinski's hexagonal chess variant, played on a 91-cell hex board.

  Three bishops and nine pawns per side. No castling. No en passant. Pawn promotion at the far edge, with full piece choice. Movement follows three axis-aligned rook directions, three bishop diagonals, and twelve knight offsets adapted for hex coordinates.

Fog Settings

Three visibility modes selectable before any game:

• The Veil — Standard fog. Each player sees squares adjacent to their own pieces. The enemy king is always visible.

• The Abyss — Maximum fog. No exceptions. No guaranteed king visibility. Once you spot an enemy piece, it stays revealed to you — but only you, and only until your perspective changes.

• Apokalypsis — No fog. All pieces visible. For casual play or learning the modes.

Three difficulty levels from playing as a Peasant with a cunning plan, a noble Knight, to a ruthless Emperor.

• Peasant — tactical scoring with light randomness; captures, center control, check threats; competent but planless

• Knight — minimax depth 2 with positional tables; has a plan and pursues it. 

• Emperor — same depth as Knight but with phase-weighted objectives; adapts by game phase, castles before attacking, king activates in endgame

  The AI was written from scratch specifically for fog of war. It was not adapted from an existing engine. Existing chess engines assume perfect information. The AI maintains a belief board. It knows where your pieces started. It updates what it can see each turn. Squares it cannot see retain their last known state. It is reasoning from incomplete information the same way you are. It is not cheating. The rules do not allow it to.

Online Multiplayer

David's Duel and Thronoi supports two players online. The Council supports three. Each player sees only their own perspective — the fog is enforced per-seat. An in-game chat window is available during online sessions.

An observer slot is available in online lobbies. Observers join with full board visibility and watch the game unfold with no fog. All pieces, both sides, the full picture — while the players themselves remain in the dark.

Key Features:

• Full fog-of-war visibility system — see only what your pieces can see, AI operates on starting piece location assumptions and updates based on player movement, Player pieces are also concealed. 

• Three modes of play: All but Kings only are hidden (The Veil), All pieces hidden (Abyss) , and All Revealed (Apokalypsis) for classic play.

• David's Duel — standard 8x8 board, with standard chess rules wrapped in darkness

• The Council — New custom 3-King circular chess on a circular board, pawn can move in multiple directions

• Cave, Winter, and Desert environments

• AI opponents at three difficulty levels

• Online multiplayer

• Online observer. Watch the board unfold with clear vision, watching the game unfold. 

• Ghost piece preview system for navigating fog-covered squares