King of the Hill
Walk your king to the center and win
Checkmate still works, but there is a second way to win: get your king onto one of the four center squares. Kings become attackers.
How it plays
- 1
Reaching d4, e4, d5, or e5 with your king wins immediately.
- 2
Checkmate also still wins.
- 3
You cannot move your king through or into check to get there.
- 4
All other rules are standard.
What the lights do
The four center squares glow faintly all game and brighten as a king approaches. A king move that would claim the hill lights up gold. Check still flashes the whole board red.
What you'll hear
Lifting, putting down, moving, and capturing each have their own sound. Check is a double beep, and claiming the hill or delivering checkmate plays the win fanfare. An illegal square buzzes. Volume is adjustable from the Connect page, all the way down to silent.
What you need
- One board
Runs on
Open Chess Board · ESP32-S3
Built by Concept Bytes · based on classic_chess.ino · on OpenChessCore 1.0.0
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Make it yours
The Code tab has the whole game — 404 lines of rules, colours, and animations. Everything about the hardware lives in OpenChessCore, so that is all you need to read.
To upload your own version from Arduino IDE, add OpenChessCore.zip as a library, install Adafruit NeoPixel, NimBLE-Arduino, and pick ESP32S3 Dev Module with USB CDC On Boot: Enabled.