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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Half chess

A casual chess game where games only last 5 minutes

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Half chess launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Play chess faster

    2021 · fb.gg · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Learn to be a better Chess player, playable in your browser

    2017 · halfchess.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Hi HN! I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet. Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess. OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in…

    2025 · offchess.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Test your skills and strategy with 1D Chess

    2020 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    A puzzling chess-like game

    2020 · notchess.crevasse.co · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Play chess online for free on Chess.com with over 250 million members from around the world. Have fun playing with friends or challenging the computer!

    2011 · multiplayerchess.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Your pieces do the strangest things!

    2019 · pippinbarr.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    3Chess▲106

    Play three player chess online free for web and mobile

    2023 · 3-chess.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
  10. 10

    Kung Fu Chess, a real-time chess game. Contribute to paladin8/kfchess-cc development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Guess AI Engine Tournament Position, Fun Stury Tool. Play Chess Without Moving Pieces. Crazy Chess is a Variant of Random Fisher and Really Bad Chess. Because of the rearranged pieces, players cannot use typical chess opening moves. study tool to understand chess, and learning how to read the board.

    2017 · ba.net · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    blunderchess.net is an open source, peer-to-peer chess app where every five moves, players each get to make one blunder-move for their opponent

    2025 · blunderchess.net · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Chess — but a mini-game decides every capture

    Jun 2026 · dualchess.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hello! I created SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) because I wanted a tactics training app that would have the following features: - Spaced Repetition. - Countdown time to simulate blitz Chess where you have to find the best move quickly. - The ability to save puzzles for later review. I'd love to hear any feedback that you may have !

    2023 · spicychess.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Chess, but each square also follows the rules of Conway's Game of Life. Only your own pieces count as neighbours when deciding births/deaths. For births, an empty square must have 3 neighbours for 2 consecutive turns. For deaths, a piece must have 3 neighbours for 3 consecutive turns. This is a simple proof of concept I made with python and curses. You can play with a friend locally or over a socket connection. Controls: Arrow keys to move the cursor, enter/space to select and move a piece, u or backspace to undo a move, r to redo a move, q or escape to quit, s to perform a move…

    2023 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Compete in 2 min chess puzzles with other players.

    Nov 2025 · rooktook.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    A game of chess everyone can enjoy

    2018 · sparkchess.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Solo dev here. Schmess is chess with the turn structure removed. Both players move whenever they have a free slot, and every piece freezes on a cooldown after it moves. It's on a half board, with 100+ puzzle stages. If two people played this over a physical board they'd scrape each other's fingers raw - that's roughly the tempo. Plays in the browser, no signup. 29 stages free, one-time unlock for the rest ($3.99 / Rs 149). No subscription, no ads. It's the second of a few small-board variants I'm building (halfchess was the first, more coming). Building a chess engine for a game with no…

    Jul 2026 · schmess.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    A challenging puzzle game based on the rules of chess

    2015 · montoyaindustries.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Chess pattern training. No timers, no streaks, no ratings.

    Jun 2026 · boxwoodchess.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Unique real-time chess without a queue for a move

    2022 · storm-chess.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22R

    2014 · retichess.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    I continue my experiment of transposing classic games onto an irregular grid. I've previously released variants of minesweeper and checkers. And now I'd like to share my variant of Chess. Chess can be a pretty punishing game, but I thought this was nevertheless a way to make it even more challenging by making it trickier to anticipate your opponent, even though both players still have the same information. From the playtests I've done, that challenge is pretty compelling. It also seems to be more fun at 2 people, where both players keep surprising one another.

    2024 · polyreplay.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Minimalist daily chess habit game

    Dec 2025 · dailychessblitz.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →