Hey again HN! I'm sami, the creator of echo chess. Humbled to see this game up on HN again. This is a chess variant I first developed as a beta last year and the feedback from the community has been incredibly helpful.
Spent the past year iterating on it and honing it into a daily format. So many more improvements to come. Lmk if you have any questions or suggestions. Would love to hear your thoughts.
-How to play: You play White (it's always your turn). You become any piece you capture, and your goal is to clear the board in the fewest number of moves. You can capture your own pieces too. No castling, promotions, or en passant.
-What's Zen Mode: a procedurally generated infinite mode that uses an ML model I built. Happy to answer any questions on that.
I like the music, but consider starting it muted and only downloading 3.6MB of mp3 if someone unmutes.
This might be a good idea because it's typical that web games like this usually don't play music or even sounds. It's kind of a context thing? If in a game app, music and sounds are expected... if it's a website, not so much.
This would also help reduce the fairly large download that makes the game a bit chonky to load.
Thanks Waterluvian, that's actually a really good point. Do you feel the same about the rest of the sound effects, or is it mostly the music starting as ON in the context of a web game that feels unexpected?
The only feedback I'd add is to make it more clear that the red squares are just inaccessible, because that wasn't at all clear at first. When failing to move a piece, the red squares together with a non-standard mechanic makes it unclear what you're missing.
Probably just some text at the top of the puzzle or a better UI cue would be enough.
Thanks edanm, really glad you're enjoying echo chess! Very good point, will iterate on that. Would it help if the obstacle squares had some pattern/texture in them or something like an 'x' inside instead of simply being a different color?
...Also for anyone who's curious about the extremely deep rabbit hole involved in this project, I think you'll enjoy this (somewhat) quick read: https://samiramly.com/chess
Whoa, this post is actually really inspiring! It gives me a better understanding for why Echo Chess has more replayability than other lil' games I've toyed with. It makes me want to poke at new ideas now. Thanks for sharing this crazy journey of yours!
I guess I also want to ask: are you making money on this? Like, how do you have this much time to spend on this project?
So is the idea that the dark red squares are inaccessible and you just can't move to them? I spent way too long trying to figure that out. I was stuck thinking along the lines of not being able to to move into check, even after transformation to another piece.
Yup, you can't move to them. Weirdly I didn't notice them at all until several attempts in (and was getting confused as to why certain moves weren't allowed), in a way that reminded me of the Selective Attention Test[0]. Once I'd clocked them I was able to solve it pretty quickly.
That Selective Attention experiment always amazes me. It's like one of those things that shouldn't really work but they somehow do. Like welding an impossible triangle.
Workaround: pick the piece and move the finger upwards, then you can freely move it around (as in, instead of press-down-release, do press-up-down-release).
The pull to refresh has been very broken since forever. Apparently they enabled it by default in the latest version because it was "very stable" but I'm not so sure...
The drag down gesture in Firefox was disabled last year because it interfered with page content. Are you running an old version or did you explicitly re-enable that behavior somehow?
I like the game, and the website, but this daily format combined with how fast the game is to play doesn't get me engaged enough to save it to my favbar and return - I just didn't have enough time to get hooked and really dislike artificial scarcity like this. Wordle worked imo because it's so immersive and it's not as rapid to conclude - also because there is a very limited set of 5 words in english comparing to chess scenarios or other games that are following the same trend recently (without a proper reasoning).
If you just want to send a code, and you want to tie it to some kind of identifier token, take the less-than-a-day that it takes to add normal "trusted third party" authentication, where you ask google/facebook/github/whoever to confirm this is a real person.
And then you don't have to save any personal information, either (which laws both in the US and EU say includes phone numbers), which means you also can't LEAK personal information when someone inevitably gets into your database.
Hey gverrilla, looks like you tried the game when the traffic was at the peak and the server crashed temporarily. If you'd like to give it another try, we're fully live again online.
The idea isn’t bad, but I’m struggling to understand why a login is required to access an archive of free content, and why said login requires a phone number. Again, to access ostensibly free content.
That makes me really suspicious about what you do with the phone number.
Thanks guys, super helpful feedback! Sorry about that, the Twilio phone login was meant to make it more convenient for the mobile users to keep going with a direct code. I can totally see how that's perceived though, you're 100% correct. Will be changing the auth to username or email instead.
Very helpful feedback, will get this right. Thanks again for the feedback guys.
Even if they do absolutely nothing with the number, I'm not putting it in. It's not a question of their intention but my convenience and peace of mind.
100% fair. Sorry about that quantxx. The mobile login was only meant to facilitate the login for mobile users through quick Twilio verification. Will move that to username or email instead. Really appreciate the feedback.
I like it, but I find it frustrating that zen mode is timed and that I have to login to access past puzzles - I don't find it enjoyable or worth it with these constrains.
Thanks for the helpful input on this. Concerning the zen mode constraint, do you feel like the countdown timer is what's feeling off-putting to you, or is it the combo reset on shuffling?
Many players who love this mode are also fans of blitz chess. Curious if you're into rapid/bullet modes in general or that's not really your cup of tea.
1. The basic rules don't state that there is no promotion.
2. I would like to know a kind of "par" value per puzzle. Either the best it can be solved in or the average or something like that. This would help in finding an optimal-ish solution.
Great points, thanks for sharing the feedback. Noted for #1. For #2, did you mean separately from the results screen you get at the end of a daily puzzle? That screen shows a move efficiency bar at the bottom with something like
"Only 12 moves! Best is 10"
Granted this will be displayed in a much better way over time.
I am probably wrong about #2. It's probably too easy if you get the # optimal moves. If you know the number of moves, that tells you how many non capture moves. That is a very strong hint, especially since there are only a handful of real choices per puzzle (at least today).
I don't think I saw the #moves the first time, or at the very least the lack of a try again/try for optimal/try other puzzles button made the page seem terminal. I imagine the share button is prominently there to go for virality.
https://wafflegame.net/archive is a game that is very similar to yours. I like their layout. The archive with a score per puzzle and aggregated information at the top is fairly addicting.
Waffle puzzles give you a maximum number of moves, 5 more than optimal. I like that more than infinite moves with try again. I think "failing" gives attempting more meaning.
This is a lot of fun and surprisingly tricky to calculate. One point of feedback: it would be cool if after solving it told you what the lowest possible number of moves was for that puzzle. It seems to just tell me the lowest number I've done?0
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying the echo chess variant. It does show you at the end - there's like a progress bar with how many moves you got and what the best known number of moves is. Is it not displaying correctly on your end?
Readit News
Spent the past year iterating on it and honing it into a daily format. So many more improvements to come. Lmk if you have any questions or suggestions. Would love to hear your thoughts.
-How to play: You play White (it's always your turn). You become any piece you capture, and your goal is to clear the board in the fewest number of moves. You can capture your own pieces too. No castling, promotions, or en passant.
-What's Zen Mode: a procedurally generated infinite mode that uses an ML model I built. Happy to answer any questions on that.
https://echochess.com/
This might be a good idea because it's typical that web games like this usually don't play music or even sounds. It's kind of a context thing? If in a game app, music and sounds are expected... if it's a website, not so much.
This would also help reduce the fairly large download that makes the game a bit chonky to load.
Plus I for one liked the cute sound effects and didn't even think about the music as something unusual.
This seems similar to a game useChess - https://use-chess.fall-2023.reactjam.com - I played last year. Would you happen to be the same author?
Deleted Comment
The only feedback I'd add is to make it more clear that the red squares are just inaccessible, because that wasn't at all clear at first. When failing to move a piece, the red squares together with a non-standard mechanic makes it unclear what you're missing.
Probably just some text at the top of the puzzle or a better UI cue would be enough.
I guess I also want to ask: are you making money on this? Like, how do you have this much time to spend on this project?
Deleted Comment
You know what would be cool: flashing a trivia fact beneath the board with each move. Maybe a chess history fact?
EDIT: Man - epic is no joke!...
LOVE this.
and yes, some of the daily epic puzzles can be brutal :)
I think it might help to start with a certain strategy in mind. were you able to hone in on a strategy for that one yet? lmk if I can help
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
The pull to refresh has been very broken since forever. Apparently they enabled it by default in the latest version because it was "very stable" but I'm not so sure...
If you just want to send a code, and you want to tie it to some kind of identifier token, take the less-than-a-day that it takes to add normal "trusted third party" authentication, where you ask google/facebook/github/whoever to confirm this is a real person.
And then you don't have to save any personal information, either (which laws both in the US and EU say includes phone numbers), which means you also can't LEAK personal information when someone inevitably gets into your database.
Deleted Comment
That makes me really suspicious about what you do with the phone number.
Very helpful feedback, will get this right. Thanks again for the feedback guys.
Many players who love this mode are also fans of blitz chess. Curious if you're into rapid/bullet modes in general or that's not really your cup of tea.
Edit: ah, you mean in zen mode - true, it’s there. Then again, the timer is still running, which I find annoying.
1. The basic rules don't state that there is no promotion.
2. I would like to know a kind of "par" value per puzzle. Either the best it can be solved in or the average or something like that. This would help in finding an optimal-ish solution.
"Only 12 moves! Best is 10"
Granted this will be displayed in a much better way over time.
I don't think I saw the #moves the first time, or at the very least the lack of a try again/try for optimal/try other puzzles button made the page seem terminal. I imagine the share button is prominently there to go for virality.
https://wafflegame.net/archive is a game that is very similar to yours. I like their layout. The archive with a score per puzzle and aggregated information at the top is fairly addicting.
Waffle puzzles give you a maximum number of moves, 5 more than optimal. I like that more than infinite moves with try again. I think "failing" gives attempting more meaning.