Square Off — World’s Smartest Chess Board [Kickstarter]

It’s a good time for classic-style games on Kickstarter. Last night, I wrote about the sci-fi playing card deck STARDECK. Today, I’ll point your attention to Square Off, an automated chess board that lets you play against opponents across the globe, with pieces that move on their own based on each players’ moves, Harry Potterstyle.

The best way to understand is to watch their promo video:

How cool is that? If you don’t always want to play against a real opponent far away, you can always play against the board’s own AI, which is based on the Stockfish 7 open source chess engine (with the beginner-friendly Cuckoo Chess as its secondary engine). Either way, the coolest part is that it’s all programmed in such a way that the chess pieces don’t collide with each other during gameplay, even the knights.

Back the Kickstarter at a minimum level of €199 (~$223 USD) to receive a Square Off set of your own when the project is successfully funded on November 17th, 2016. (They’ve already more than doubled their funding goal.)