As with Chesses’ grab-bag of weird and wonderful Chess remixes, Barr’s new sequel is a free browser game offering eight remixes of the thousand-year-old board game - ranging from immediate gags to fascinating new puzzle scenarios. Fog entrusts players to look away from the screen during the other’s turn, each side’s view obscured by their own RTS-style fog of war. Musical turns the position of each piece into notes on a repeating tracker. There are modes where moving a piece changes its type or team, and even a homage to the wall drawings of minimalist New York artist Sol LeWitt. Then there’s XR, pictured above, which simply instructs you to “orient your device screen up and place appropriately-sized Chess pieces in the standard opening position.” Very funny. Barr is keen to note that these aren’t all original creations. People have tried giving Chess an information-gathering element through fog-of-war before with games like 1989’s Dark Chess, and he’s by far not the first to mash Chess and Checkers together - though he still reckons his variations are distinct enough to stand on their own. But largely, Chesses 2 is a lovely bundle of quick little “what if?” Chess scenarios. For something with a little more teeth, Barr and Johnathan Lessard’s Chogue turns Chess into a proper dungeon-crawling roguelike. Chesses 2 can be played in your browser for free. Tired of checking mates? Barr’s got a history of remixing classics, with Breaksout and Pongs each providing a whopping 36 twists on their respective base games. That’s like, 72 games right there. Should keep you busy.
