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Schmess
Real-time chess: no turns, per-piece cooldowns, half board
Schmess is chess with the turns deleted. The idea comes from cooldown chess — but I made the engine much better. How it works: you make TWO moves at a time. Move a piece and it freezes for 8 seconds. Your third move sits in a queue until a cooldown expires. And you capture the king like any other piece — no checkmate, just take it. If you're good at chess this might come easy. If you're just okay, there's a learning curve — and then it gets really fun, and really fast.
Hey PH! Solo indie dev here.
I'm building a series of chess variants on a half board. Schmess is the second one. Next up: re-releasing halfchess, my first variant, and more after that.
Why half board? Smaller board, faster games, and each variant only needs one twist to feel completely new. Schmess deletes the turns.
The hardest part was the engine. Normal chess engines assume the opponent waits while they think. Mine can't. Happy to go deep on that in the comments if anyone's curious.
Two things I'd love from you: feedback on how Schmess feels, and ideas for what chess variant you'd want to see on a half board next. Best ideas might actually get built.
About Schmess on Product Hunt
“Real-time chess: no turns, per-piece cooldowns, half board”
Schmess was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 4 upvotes and 2 comments, placing #105 on the daily leaderboard. Schmess is chess with the turns deleted. The idea comes from cooldown chess — but I made the engine much better. How it works: you make TWO moves at a time. Move a piece and it freezes for 8 seconds. Your third move sits in a queue until a cooldown expires. And you capture the king like any other piece — no checkmate, just take it. If you're good at chess this might come easy. If you're just okay, there's a learning curve — and then it gets really fun, and really fast.
On the analytics side, Schmess competes within Android, Board Games, Artificial Intelligence and Games — topics that collectively have 637.5k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Schmess performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted Schmess?
Schmess was hunted by Naval Saini. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of Schmess including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Naval Saini