🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 13, 2016 02:59 PM UTC:
Since your object in designing these games is to come up with a viable successor to Chess, I will evaluate them by that criterion. I do not believe that either game you described here has much chance of winning over Chess fans and displacing Chess as the most popular Chess variant. The first one adds pieces that change directions, these being the Griffon and the Aanca. No piece in Chess changes direction partway through its move, because such moves make the game overly complicated, and many players would find direction-changing moves less intuitive. The second game introduces several divergent pieces. Although Chess does have one divergent piece, and CV players are used to the Cannon from Chinese Chess, adding several divergent pieces the way this game does can make things more confusing for players. Also, I don't think that adding a foul (is that like a foul ball in baseball? Or do you mean a fool?) will help make these games more popular. In general, including extra pieces that start off the board can make a game harder to program, and this piece in particular, which seems to be something like the chameleon in Ultima, would decrease the clarity of the game. Just like countless other Chess variants, these games may have niche appeal for people who want something more challenging and complicated than Chess, but I expect they will never fill the niche that Chess currently fills.
Since your object in designing these games is to come up with a viable successor to Chess, I will evaluate them by that criterion. I do not believe that either game you described here has much chance of winning over Chess fans and displacing Chess as the most popular Chess variant. The first one adds pieces that change directions, these being the Griffon and the Aanca. No piece in Chess changes direction partway through its move, because such moves make the game overly complicated, and many players would find direction-changing moves less intuitive. The second game introduces several divergent pieces. Although Chess does have one divergent piece, and CV players are used to the Cannon from Chinese Chess, adding several divergent pieces the way this game does can make things more confusing for players. Also, I don't think that adding a foul (is that like a foul ball in baseball? Or do you mean a fool?) will help make these games more popular. In general, including extra pieces that start off the board can make a game harder to program, and this piece in particular, which seems to be something like the chameleon in Ultima, would decrease the clarity of the game. Just like countless other Chess variants, these games may have niche appeal for people who want something more challenging and complicated than Chess, but I expect they will never fill the niche that Chess currently fills.