Schmess
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…
Schmess launched on July 29, 2026 with 4 votes, #6,023 of 24,623 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.
What it does
Schmess is chess with the turns deleted. The idea comes from cooldown chess — but I made the engine much better. How it works: you make TWO moves at a time. Move a piece and it freezes for 8 seconds. Your third move sits in a queue until a cooldown expires. And you capture the king like any other piece — no checkmate, just take it. If you're good at chess this might come easy. If you're just okay, there's a learning curve — and then it gets really fun, and really fast.
Schmess is chess where both sides move at once and every piece has a cooldown. Matches finish in under two minutes. Free on the App Store and Google Play.
In the maker’s words, at launch
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…
Does a similar job
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