Single Comment

George, I looked at all your examples, and the conclusion I come to is that
you are a 'lumper' and I am a 'splitter'. I see your categories [as
exemplified by your suggested list of games 'similar enough' to Alice]
as far too overbroad. I would have to think you'd say mine are too
narrow. 

I see the forced level change - 'every turn, every piece' - as a major
influence on the game, or any game that's 'Alice'd'. What other 3D
game makes the knights colorbound? Colorbound Alice knights are to a great
extent an artifact of an even number of board levels; knights are not
necessarily colorbound in Alice games with an odd number of levels. [The
final determining factor is whether the levels are wrap-around or not.] 

And that involuntary 'step-across' weakens all the other pieces, too. It
is generally the case that, compared with FIDE, when a piece moves in
Alice, it must have an extra empty square available beyond what FIDE
requires, thus being more easily blocked. Piece density is lower and
square connectivity is higher, making things comparatively harder to
guard... and so on. 

The design I offer tries to address all these issues in various ways, and
it keeps true to the key idea: forced level change, every piece, every
turn. It uses shortrange pieces, an idea tried out in Alice Modern
Shatranj, and in the Zillions TSRP release, with several shatranj
variations. These showed shortrange pieces work well in an Alice
environment, which is different than a standard 3D environment - somewhat
the same way as leaping chess [where pieces are captured by being leapt
over, with the capturing piece landing on the immediately following
square, which must be empty for the move to take place] is different from
FIDE. While I hope everyone really likes my stuff, I realize some will
not. 

Enjoy, or not,
Joe