Game Mechanic Case Study

Dylan Broussard

Mrs. Sasser

English

16 September 2015

A Change In Chess

Chess is a very popular and very old game. The origin is not exact but many believe that chess started in India around the 6th century. The original version created in India is not the version we most commonly know today. This version we know today was set up in Europe around the 15th century (History of Chess).

Chess is a simple game to understand. It is played on a board of 64 squares. Each player begins the game with two rows of eight pieces. The first row is made up of pieces called pawns. These pawns can open the game by moving forwards one or two squares. After their first move, the pawns can only move forwards, never backwards, one square. The pawns can only attack diagonally. Behind the row of pawns are eight other pieces. From left to right, these pieces consist of a rook, a knight, a bishop, a queen, a king, another bishop, another knight, and finally, another rook. The rooks are allowed to move left, right, forward, or backwards as many spaces as the player desires. The Knight can move two squares any direction, except diagonally, and then one more square at a 90 degree angle. This makes an “L” shape. The Bishops may move as many squares as the player desires, but only diagonally. The queen may move as many squares as the player desires in any direction. And finally, the king can move any direction the player pleases, but only one square at a time. Although the king can not do much, he is the most important part of the game.

After the end of a chess game, the board is set back up the same way it was in the beginning. Chess is by far one of my favorite board games. It amazes me that just after four moves in chess, there are over four million possibilities. You could play countless numbers of chess games and never play the same way twice. It is one game that you can always play differently to give it a challenge. Chess is hard but what if there was a way that you could change the rule of the board set up so there was a new way to play chess? The chess game board set up of today’s version of chess has already been thought about and analyzed to the point that not many new ideas come from it , but a new version of chess where each piece in the second row was randomized from the start of the game gives new theories and new possibilities for the game.

Randomizing the second row of pieces each game creates new challenges. For example, instead of having rooks on the outside corners of the board, there might be a knight and your queen there now and rooks in their places. Now, players are forced to think about strategy differently. The ways players usually start a game of chess would not be possible due to the change in pieces. Opportunities would strike at different times and in different ways now. Opportunities such as taking pieces from your opponent, or ways a player could get control of center of the board. It could give not so good players the chance to actually compete with good players, force more thinking time during each turn, and dozens of other new possibilities.

Chess is a game of strategy that has been around for hundreds of years. Because it is so old, there is not a lot of new theory that comes along. By randomizing the back row of pieces, chess theory is now challenged and re-created. It takes away the assumption and instinct of regular chess and gives it a new and challenging feel to this old game.