What this game is

Pocket Pawns is a chess role-playing game about collecting chess pieces. You explore the continent of Casteria, town by town. Wild chess pieces live along the roads, and each one challenges you to a checkmate puzzle. Solve it and the piece joins your team. You then play real chess matches with your team against the characters of the world, and work your way up to the World Championship.

How catching a piece works

A wild piece shows you a chess position and asks for checkmate in one to five moves. Find the checkmate and the piece is yours. If you ask for a hint, the game shows you the move, but the piece is then caught only half the time. If you play two wrong moves, the piece runs away. You lose nothing, and the same kinds of pieces keep appearing on the same roads, so you can always try again.

The game holds 5,890 checkmate puzzles, every one checked by a chess engine, from a simple checkmate in one to a checkmate in five that will make you think.

What you will find in Casteria

• 272 chess pieces to collect, each with its own artwork and its own entry in your collection book. Every piece you meet is recorded, even if you do not catch it.
  
• Kings are special. You never find a king in the wild. Town elders give them to you, and some stories reward you with one.
  
• 589 chess boards to play on. You start with one. The rest you buy in shops, win in stories, or earn by finishing certain lessons.
  
• Nine towns, each different: a snowy town lit by lanterns, a clockwork town, a harbour, a desert oasis, cliffs in a thunderstorm, an autumn forest, and a town built inside a giant tree.
  
• Six Club Masters. Each runs a chess club, has a style of their own, and plays a full six-piece team against yours. Beat one and you earn their Sigil, a badge you need for the Championship.
  
• Giant chess boards on the roads that block your way until you checkmate the king standing on them.
  
• The Rookwood Invitational, a chess festival with twelve boards to beat.
  
• Nine homes to buy, one in every town, from a farmhouse to a house on a mountain top.
  
• 39 stories to follow, with 225 named characters.

Learn chess from zero

Every town has a university, and the lessons are real: 202 lessons across 23 subjects, including how the pieces move, opening principles, tactics, checkmate patterns, rook endgames, how to read chess notation, and chess history. There are 887 interactive steps and 253 exercises where the game checks your answer.

None of it is timed. If you have never played chess, the game starts you at "this is a pawn" and takes it from there. If you have played for years, the opponent is a real chess engine (Stockfish), and it answers every move you make.

Six difficulty settings

Pick the one that fits you and the whole world adjusts. Pawnling is for players who have never moved a chess piece. Regicide makes every puzzle a checkmate in five and puts a very strong opponent on every board. Raise your team to level 70, win all six Sigils, and play the eight rounds of the World Championship.

When you want a break from thinking

The Chessino is a casino built inside a live volcano. It plays for chips, never for real money. Inside you will find Chessjack (blackjack played with chess pieces), a chess roulette wheel, a slot machine floor, a knight race to bet on, a flight game where you cash out before the knight falls, and a bar with drinks that blur the room. Climb the VIP ranks all the way to King and rent a room upstairs.

Also included

• 26 Steam achievements, and Steam Cloud carries your save between computers.
  
• A 76-track original soundtrack with a music player inside the game.
  
• Full controller support: mouse, keyboard, Xbox and other common controllers.
  
• Ten languages: English, 简体中文, Русский, Español, Português (Brasil), Deutsch, 한국어, Français, 日本語, Türkçe.
  
• A free demo with the first two towns. Your demo save continues in the full game.