How to Play

DilemmaChess plays on a 12×12 board with two original pieces alongside the classics. Here's how they move.

The Disruptor

Moves like a Rook — any distance horizontally or vertically, as far as the path is clear.

It never captures. Instead, when it lands next to an enemy piece in its path, it pushes that piece one square further back — as long as the square behind it is empty.

If there's no empty square to push into, the Disruptor simply cannot make that move.

The Wizard

Moves diagonally, 1 to 3 squares in any diagonal direction — like a short-range Bishop.

Or, it can jump in a straight line exactly 2 squares (horizontally or vertically), leaping over any piece in between — like a Knight that only jumps in straight lines.

Both move types can capture normally.

Everything else — King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight, Pawn — moves exactly as in standard chess, just on a bigger board with more room to think.

About DilemmaChess

Hi, I'm Georgi — a database engineer by day, and the person who built this entire game in my free time, alongside a full-time job.

I used to play competitive bullet chess at a high level. That experience shaped almost every decision in this game's design — from where the clock sits, to how premoves feel, to why the board takes up as much screen space as possible.

But this project comes from something deeper than nostalgia for the game. I think chess, as a culture, is losing something important. Engines are everywhere now — in preparation, in post-game analysis, in live broadcasts ranking every move as a mistake or a brilliancy before a human has had time to actually think about it. Online, a huge amount of chess content is "engine says" content. The thinking has quietly been outsourced.

DilemmaChess is my small act of resistance against that. A bigger board, two new pieces nobody has memorized opening theory for, no engine evaluation bar staring back at you — just two people, thinking, making actual decisions under real pressure. Every move here is genuinely a dilemma, not a lookup.

This is a prototype. It's rough in places, and I'm building it alone, one evening at a time. If you play a game and have thoughts — good or bad — there's a feedback button after every match. I read every single one.

Impressum

Information according to §5 ECG (E-Commerce-Gesetz) / §25 MedienG.

Georgi Georgiev
Aldranser Straße 15, TOP 12
6020 Innsbruck
Austria

Contact: available via the feedback function in-app.

DilemmaChess is currently a non-commercial, personal hobby project in prototype/testing phase. It is not operated as a registered business at this time.