Hollow Chess

Chess, but every piece has a power.

The kingdom has fallen. Only the King remains.
Lead his army of sixteen pieces through six haunted realms, fuse them into legends, and break the board on the way to taking back the crown.

Hollow Chess is a roguelike chess game: chess moves, impossible powers, Isaac-style relics and permadeath.

You are the last King of a shattered chess kingdom, and the Hollow Sovereign wears the crown that was yours.
Choose your King, lead sixteen upgradable, replaceable pieces down through three acts, and take it back.

It moves like chess. Then the Wyrm Rider sets a whole corner of the board on fire.
Frost Bishops freeze giants solid, Storm Bishops chain lightning, Hex Queens turn knights into frogs.

Six rarities, from Common to the mythic SSS. Recruit new pieces into your slots, hone them, and teach them new passives and skills.

The castle crashes. The Abyssal Leviathan hurls every enemy in its row and column three squares away.
With the Abyssal Edge relic, off the board means gone.

The King fights. Your King is a piece too.
Hurt the Eclipse King and his Wrath strikes everything within two squares.

A martyr's sacrifice. When a blow would kill your King, the Martyr swaps places and takes it for him.

Devour. Chain. Repeat. Ravenous pieces eat every adjacent enemy and keep going,
chaining into TRIPLE, CARNAGE and MASSACRE combos.

At the Alchemist's Altar two pieces become one. Two Legendaries make an SS.
An SS fused with a Legendary or better births one of six mythic SSS pieces found nowhere else.

Twin Crowns for two actions a turn. An Echo Shell that casts every untargeted skill twice.
A Chaos Orb that does something chaotic every turn. Usually good. Balance is not invited.

Bomb Imps explode on everyone, including each other. One cannonball can clear a crowd.

Explore each floor room by room: merchants, trainers, treasure vaults, shrines, and ambushes behind sealed doors.
Each act draws one of two realms, each realm ends with a boss, and the fallen stay fallen until the next act.

• 87 pieces from Common to SSS, each with its own passive or skill.
• Fusion: special pairs, rarer same-kind fusions and six mythic SSS pieces.
• 63 relics built around synergies: frost, fire, storm, summons, combos, pushes, teleports, gold and pure chaos.
• Six realms in three acts, six bosses, elite champions and Crown Shrines.
• Four kings with their own courts, and permadeath per act: the fallen sit out until the next act.
• A tactical enemy AI that weighs every move and skill, and an optional Rising Tempo for faster endgames.
• Original music and sound effects, synthesized for the game.

From the current build. Click any picture to see it full size.

Hollow Chess is out now for Windows, and Steam is coming soon.
Follow Twindark on itch.io for updates, and come share your wildest runs with us on Discord.

Content notes: fantasy violence. Single-player. Language: English.

Development notes

Hollow Chess uses AI-assisted art, text and code, directed and reviewed by its developer. Its music and sound effects are synthesized procedurally. Screenshots and animations show the October 2026 build.