I spent a lot of time thinking about this one. World Chess Day. Chess is literally a game about flanking an opponent geographically, wiping out their forces, and striking down the leader. Can’t get much more geographic than this, honestly.
Alas, how can I possible make chess look and feel geographic and mappy?
Sure, I could color the board as a map. But…
So I decided to create a chess-like game, because honestly, there are so many chess apps already, and you can ask Eric Losang at the next Euro Carto or ICC meeting, but I really, really stink at Chess. Like, even with two apps teaching me how to play, I don’t get it.
I like games of luck, where low-probability and outlandish outlier moves have a chance, and in chess there is none of that. To me at least, it seems there is one “right” move on each turn and infinite “hopefully-your-opponent-doesn’t-notice-what-a-dingbat-you-are-and-wipe-you-out-within-two-turns-because-you’re-so-bad-at-chess” move. Every single turn, I somehow almost always end up picking one of the latter – well, I suppose probability says that’s likely, but I’ve never picked the right move, even once. But I still enjoy the game.
There are many stellar tile and card games in production these days. So I thought, wouldn’t it be kind of fun to create a chess-like prototype game that mixes up elements of The Cartographers (imagine me owning that game?)), Carcassonne, and I forget what other game I was thinking of at the time, but it wasn’t Chess. Oh, Castles of Burgundy and Carpe Diem by Stefan Feld… two amazing games.
So I prompted Web Mapper GPT to please come up with a schema for this new quasi-chess game. It did. Then I prompted it to please make the game but I added a twist.
The other day I mentioned in a LinkedIn post or somewhere… I don’t actually remember where or when… that you can make new design styles and create maps with prompt cartography from almost anything, “even old IKEA furniture catalogs.”
Well guess what… this map uses a design schema inspired by the graphic design style (not the sofa images) of 20-some years of Ikea and similar Scandinavian catalogs.
I think you’ll see that reflected in the sharp corners, modular build, and very IKEA colors. Kind of neat, even if it’s not particularly “chessy.” Maybe it’s neo-chessy, retro-Swedish? Whatever, it’s modular chess.
I built the first iteration to be quite simple, only a 5×5 board. However, there are plans to push it to 8×8 in the future, maybe when I’m not making maps of Chess Day some year.
The game has a simple AI you can play against. Have fun! And happy prompt mapping! 🙂
Web Mapper Prompt
Can you come up with some chess-like game mechanics for a digital game where a player both moves pieces but also lays terrain tiles on the board to stymie the opponent and corner important pieces? The game board should be a map of some sort, or a chart that is map-themed similar to The Cartographers, Carcassonne, or Links and Rails, but also Chess of course, as this game map thing is being made for International Chess Day.
Please brainstorm and come up with some mechanic ideas and we’ll iterate from there. Thank you!