MORTAL CHESS

Every piece is living on borrowed time.

Made as part of GMTK JAM 2026 for the theme COUNTDOWN.

Mortal Chess is a single-player chess variant where your pieces has a visible life countdown. 

Winning takes more than finding checkmate. You must manage a dwindling army, harvest coins, extend the lives of key pieces, and deploy reinforcements at exactly the right moment.

Both sides begin with a lean army: one king, rook, knight, bishop, and four centered pawns. There are no starting queens. If you want one, you will have to earn it.

HOW TO PLAY

1. Click one of your white pieces, then click a highlighted legal square.

2. Hover over a destination to preview the countdown result and see which friendly pieces are about to expire.

3. Click the selected piece again to cancel the selection.

4. Select a mortal piece and click its + button to buy it one more turn.

5. Click BUY PIECE, choose a piece you can afford, move it over a legal square in your bottom two rows, and click to deploy it. Pawns must enter on their natural second rank.

6. You cannot buy and deploy a new piece while in check, but you may still extend the life of a piece.

Chess pieces move as normal. Checkmate wins as normal, but mortality creates another way to finish the fight! 

If a king is left alone, that side loses unless it can afford a legal LAST CHANCE deployment. Closing that final shop without buying accepts defeat. 

If only the two kings remain, the game is a draw.

Choose from Easy, Normal, Hard, or Brutal countdown pressure, then adjust the Black AI from Quick to Maximum thinking effort.

CONTROLS

- Mouse: navigate menus, select and move pieces, buy, deploy, and extend life

- Esc: pause and open sound/music settings; press again to resume

- R: return to the game-selection screen

- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4: start Easy / Normal / Hard / Brutal from the title screen

- Tab: cycle AI effort from the title screen

WINDOWS DOWNLOAD

Extract the complete ZIP, keep all its contents together, and run MortalChess.exe.'

CREDITS

A game created by Dag Koding / Koding Nights

Assets used

Chess pieces:

https://berryarray.itch.io/chess-pieces-16x16-one-bit

Spinning coins:

https://laredgames.itch.io/gems-coins-free

Music:

https://pixabay.com/music/future-bass-black-box-legendary-9509/

Sound effects:

https://jdsherbert.itch.io/wooden-ui-sfx-pack

Fonts:

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/DynaPuff

https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans