Best Chess Roguelikes: Every One I Could Confirm
The short answer
Buy Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate first. It carries the largest Steam review count in this census, its hook survives one sentence, and its store page promises a run in about twenty minutes, which matters more here than depth does. If you cannot actually play chess, start with Pawnbarian. If you would rather play cards onto the board, start with Usurper.
The rest of this page is the census. I went looking for every chess roguelike I could confirm exists, tagged each one by what it does with the board, and kept the small ones that the top-ten lists drop. Updated August 2026.
A chess roguelike is a run-based game built on chess piece movement: you clear a series of short board encounters, draft upgrades between them, and a single loss ends the whole run instead of one match.
The four things a chess roguelike can be
Almost every argument about whether something “counts” comes from these four shapes getting mixed together in one list.
Tactics. The board is a chessboard, you move pieces, and the upgrades between fights change what the pieces do. Shotgun King, The Ouroboros King and Gambonanza all sit here.
Deckbuilder. Cards do the job an army does elsewhere. You play them onto the board to summon or upgrade pieces, and the deck itself grows across the run. If that is the shape you want, the long version lives in what a chess deckbuilder actually is.
Puzzle. Each encounter has a solution, and nothing on the far side of the board is playing to win. Pawnbarian is the clearest case: a hand of chess moves against a room of monsters.
Variant. The run keeps stacking new rules onto ordinary chess until the game is barely chess any more. Passant is the whole category by itself. Games that stop at the rule change and never add a run belong with the chess variants that turned into video games instead.
The census
Nine on Steam, one on itch.io. Every figure below was checked in August 2026.
| Game | Sub-mechanic | Board | Run length | Price | Steam rating (reviews) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate | Tactics | Chessboard | ~20 min | $9.99 | Very Positive (7,403) |
| Pawnbarian | Puzzle, card-driven | Tiny dungeon board | 15-30 min | $9.99 | Very Positive (894) |
| The Ouroboros King | Tactics | Chessboard | 15-45 min | $9.99 | Very Positive (569) |
| Gambonanza | Tactics | Tiny board | Not stated | $14.99 | Mostly Positive (1,613) |
| Passant: A Chess Roguelike | Variant stacking | Chessboard | Not stated | $11.99 | Mostly Positive (369) |
| Chess Survivors | Tactics, horde | Grid | Not stated | $4.99 | Very Positive (162) |
| Usurper | Deckbuilder | Chessboard | Not stated | $9.99 | Mostly Positive (48) |
| Chess: The Lost Pieces | Deckbuilder | Chessboard | Not stated | $7.99 | Mostly Positive (22) |
| Real Time Chess Roguelike | Tactics, real time | Chessboard | Not stated | No price set | Unreleased |
| Archesspelago | Tactics, map crawl | Island maps | Not stated | Name your own price | itch.io only, no Steam page |
Two columns need their sourcing said out loud. Run length is only filled in when the store page itself commits to a number, which three of the ten do. Board uses the store page’s own wording where it gives one, and says “chessboard” where the game plays on a normal eight-by-eight board with no comment about it.
The nine on Steam, one verdict each
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate explains itself in one screenshot, which is what makes it the right first purchase for almost everyone: your entire army defected, you have a shotgun, and every upgrade you take also hands the enemy one. Its store page is specific about the commitment it wants from you, promising runs of about 20 minutes and 20 ranks of difficulty to climb.
Pawnbarian is the one to buy if chess itself is the obstacle, because you never play a chess game: you play a hand of cards that move one hero like a chess piece around a tiny dungeon board. The store page is unusually blunt about what it does not have, listing “No permanent upgrades” and “No complex and varied builds” under a heading called Not Features. Runs are 15 to 30 minutes.
The Ouroboros King hands you a whole army to build: fairy chess pieces, relics and gadgets stacked across 15 to 45 minute runs, with only one piece moved per turn. Take it if assembling the army is the part you want. Its store page names Shotgun King, Pawnbarian, Slay the Spire, Into the Breach and 5D Chess as inspirations.
Gambonanza ends a fight only when every piece on the board has been captured, and the board itself crumbles if you waste moves. It is the newest full-price entry here and the one that leans hardest into breaking the rules, advertising 150+ gambits that rewrite the run and a reserve system that stores pieces off the board.
Passant: A Chess Roguelike starts from ordinary chess and deforms it as you win matches, adding pieces like the Dragon Knight and rule twists like Atomic Chess and Zombie Pawns. It is the most literal reading of the genre name, and the choice if you want the chess you already know to stay recognisable underneath.
Chess Survivors takes chess movement into a horde survival loop: an ever growing crowd of chess-based enemies comes at you, builds are meant to break, and there is no enemy army to checkmate. It is the odd one out in this census, and on Steam it is the cheapest way in.
Usurper is the entry to take if the deck matters more than the board, since your king pushes up the field to let you play unit cards on the front line, and the run is a campaign of 13 bosses across four factions. At 48 reviews it holds one of the two smallest counts in the census, so treat it as a bet on one developer’s idea.
Chess: The Lost Pieces is the census entry most people have never heard of, and it earns the place with 30+ custom pieces, a randomised roguelike story mode and pieces like a rook that pulls other pieces toward it. Its 22 reviews are the smallest count here, and the developer put the roguelike mode inside a game whose title says nothing about it.
Real Time Chess Roguelike is unreleased, so wishlist it and wait. Its one idea is large: pieces stop taking turns and get individual cooldowns, with upgrades bought between battles. The store page carries no release date.
Four of these have a follow-up page of their own if you want the near neighbours: games like Shotgun King, games like Pawnbarian, games like The Ouroboros King and games like Passant.
The near misses this search will hand you
These five come back for the same query and not one of them is a roguelike, because none puts you through a chain of encounters with drafting in between. They are still worth knowing, and the difference is easy to miss on a store page. All five carry the Chess tag, and none shows Roguelike in its popular tags, which is the fastest filter you have.
| Game | What it actually is | Released | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel | Variant. Chess across branching timelines, played against a person or the computer, with no runs and no drafting | 2020 | $11.99 |
| Chessarama | Puzzle collection. Several chess-flavoured games with fixed challenges and leaderboards | 2023 | $14.99 |
| Chess Remix | Variant sandbox. Historic and modern rule sets plus a level editor for your own | 2023 | $14.99 |
| Chessformer | Gravity puzzle platformer. Pieces fall and stack after every move, the levels are handmade, and the store page calls the enemy king lazy: he never moves, and there is no run to lose | 2022 | $4.99 |
| Gambetto | Chess deckbuilder on a 5x5 board, but player against player only, with no run structure | 2026 | $4.99 |
Gambetto is the one that stings, because a chess deckbuilder is what a lot of people mean when they type this query, and its Steam category list carries no single-player entry at all.
Not on Steam at all
Archesspelago is the free way to find out whether this genre is for you. It is a 7DRL Challenge 2026 entry by anttihaavikko, made solo in a week, in which you sail a raft between procedurally generated islands, beat the pieces living on each one, recruit them, and equip them with tarot cards that bend how they move. Loss is permanent, and souls earned along the way buy starter pieces and cards before the next run. It runs in a browser or as a download, and it is name your own price.
There is no Steam page for it, so no Steam search will ever surface it. The same is true of most of the jam-sized work in this genre, which lives on the itch.io chess and roguelike tag pages. That shelf turns over constantly and almost none of it graduates to a store page, which is why any Steam-only list of chess roguelikes is a partial one.
Where to find them on Steam
Steam’s own search box is the worst tool for this. Typing “chess roguelike” into it returned four listings covering three games when I checked, and only two of the census entries above were among them: Passant and Real Time Chess Roguelike. The other seven Steam entries did not come back at all.
The tag is the tool that works. The Chess tag on Steam is the entry point, and it is user-applied, so it catches games whose titles hide the connection. Three habits make it usable:
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| The Chess tag is mostly chess clients and board game adaptations | Add Roguelike as a second tag in the tag browser, then add Roguelite separately, because Steam treats them as different tags |
| Titles hide the genre | Sort the crossed tags by release date and read down the list |
| Small entries never reach a front page | Read the tag list on a store page you already like and follow its neighbours |
The Ouroboros King is the best single hub to browse from, because its store page names five of its own influences by title, and two of them are in the census above.
Hellmate, still in development
Our own game, Hellmate, sits beside this census rather than inside it. It is roguelike deckbuilding chess set in the seven floors of Hell, where each floor belongs to a deadly sin and every sin crowns its own king. You summon pieces and cast spells with mana, brand your army with sigils, and try to melt the king’s HP before your turns run out, with Soul Coins carrying permanent upgrades between runs. It is scheduled for 19 January 2027 (checked August 2026) on Windows and macOS, and it is unreleased, so there is nothing to score and no run time to quote yet. The sin structure it borrows from is unpacked in the seven deadly sins in video games, and you can see the store page at Hellmate on Steam.
Quick answers
Do I need to know chess to play a chess roguelike? No. Pawnbarian’s store page says you can learn the piece movements in minutes, and The Ouroboros King’s says there are no openings to study. The genre borrows how pieces move and throws away the opening theory, the clock and the etiquette. If chess itself is the blocker, chess games for people who are bad at chess goes further into it.
How many chess roguelikes are actually on Steam? Eight you can buy today, plus one unreleased. Steam’s Chess tag holds far more games than that, but most of them are chess clients, variant sandboxes or puzzle collections with no run structure and no drafting between fights.
How long does one run take? About 20 minutes in Shotgun King, 15 to 30 in Pawnbarian and 15 to 45 in The Ouroboros King, and those are the only three of the ten whose store pages commit to a number. Where a page says nothing, the reviews are the only place to look before you plan an evening around it.
Is there a free chess roguelike? Yes. Archesspelago is name your own price on itch.io and plays in a browser, so it costs nothing to try. Nothing in the Steam census is free, and the cheapest paid entry is Chess Survivors at $4.99 (as of August 2026).
If the drafting interests you more than the board, the wider shelf is covered in what makes a good roguelike and in the roguelike deckbuilders worth a wishlist.
