One deck. One board. And an endgame nobody has finished in three thousand years.

Chess of the Hidden Gates is a roguelike deckbuilder that runs on Chinese chess footwork. Every card in your hand is a move, and every move decides who gets taken.

Beyond numbers: position

Nobody stands still trading damage here. A beast’s blade lands on a square, not on your health bar: step aside and the hit means nothing, stand in the wrong spot and you’re surrounded. Read the board, bait your enemies, force the position you want. Your strongest card played from the wrong square still loses. What wins here is the chess.

Three pieces, three ways to play

• Horse Master — build Momentum on the move, throw spears that stay on the board, then call every one of them back through whatever stands in the way.

• Pawn Commander — every square you hold turns into armor. Go Steadfast and nothing shifts you.

• Cannon Adept — fire through a piece in the way, and Relay shots carry all the way across the board.

The world is a board; all things are pieces

The battle of Zhuolu never ended. Its endgame is still sitting there, locked behind the Eight Gates, and you are the last player to walk in. You bring one deck, and every card in it moves a piece. The knight leaps, the cannon fires through a screen, the pawn crosses the river and never turns back. Your deck is how you move, and how you move is what keeps you alive.

What’s on the board

• Over 300 cards across four rarities — each one a move, a kill, or a trap.

• Three classes, three signature systems: Momentum burst, Steadfast defense, Relay artillery.

• Over forty beasts, each with a backstory, a temper, and a mechanic of its own.

• Nine Star bosses across three acts, each one rewriting the rules, all the way up to Chiyou at the end.

• Reshuffled every run: terrain, threats, beasts, drops. No two runs inside the Eight Gates are alike.

• A living bestiary: beat a beast and you unlock its story, written up like pages from an old field journal.

Every enemy is a prisoner

The beasts in these mountains are prisoners of a thousand-year-old board. The wolves are the grudges of Zhuolu’s fallen soldiers; the foxes are a corrupted line of the sacred Qingqiu; the tree blocking your path was planted to seal this prison and has guarded the gate ever since. Over forty creatures, each with a history, a temper, and a habit of punishing you for not reading the board. Past the last gate, the Nine Stars rotate every run: a false healer who patches up every lesser beast, a fire-star that burns the whole board through, and Tianfu, the fallen sage, who turns your own class’s cards against you. Fight all the way to the end and what is left of Chiyou is waiting, along with a choice.

Prisoners can change sides

Land the killing blow with a Spirit Seal and the beast turns into a card in your deck. Summon it back and it fights for you, with its own health, damage and temper intact. Fifty-one of them, one for nearly every creature on the board, the Nine Stars included. The board that locks them up is also how you let them out.

One table, one duel

The whole war fits on one scholar’s desk: a lacquered board for a battlefield, carved figurines for pieces, incense and candlelight around the edges. You lean over it the way you’d lean over a real game, and a three-thousand-year endgame starts moving again under your hand.