Bad at Chess? 10 Games That Skip the Openings
The objection, said out loud
I am bad at chess in a specific way. I know how the pieces move, I have never opened a book, and the moment someone plays 1.e4 and I answer with something reasonable, they are already following a line they memorised while I improvise. The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings sorts those lines into 500 classification codes, A00 through E99. That is the wall. It is not that chess is hard to understand. It is that the first fifteen moves of a serious game are homework, and I do not want homework.
So I went looking for something else: games that use a chessboard and chess movement and never once ask what I know about openings.
Really Bad Chess is the closest thing that already exists, Zach Gage’s 2016 mobile game that hands both players 15 random pieces so no opening survives contact. Good instinct, iOS and Android only. Everything below is on Steam, on a desktop, and picked on one test: can you play it well without knowing a single named opening?
The short answer
Buy Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate. You control one piece, the only chess rule you need is what “check” means, and a run takes about twenty minutes. If you want something quieter, Pawnbarian is the calmest entry point on this page. If you want a chessboard with no opponent on it at all, Chessformer costs less than a coffee.
Ten games, compared
| Game | Steam price (as of August 2026) | Steam reviews (as of August 2026) | What it expects you to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chessformer | $4.99 | 321 (Very Positive) | Nothing. There is no opponent |
| Chessarama | $14.99 | 180 (Very Positive) | Nothing. It teaches the moves inside the puzzles |
| Pawnbarian | $9.99 | 894 (Very Positive) | How the six pieces move |
| Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate | $9.99 | 7,403 (Very Positive) | What “check” means |
| Passant: A Chess Roguelike | $11.99 | 369 (Mostly Positive) | How the pieces move, at a difficulty you set |
| Gambonanza | $14.99 | 1,613 (Mostly Positive) | How the pieces move, then how to break them |
| The Ouroboros King | $9.99 | 569 (Very Positive) | How the pieces move |
| Usurper | $9.99 | 48 (Mostly Positive) | Very little. The cards do the placing |
| Chess: The Lost Pieces | $7.99 | 22 (Mostly Positive) | How the pieces move |
| Chess Remix | $14.99 | 10 (Mixed) | The moves, and nothing after them |
Updated August 2026. Prices are the regular Steam list price in USD, never a sale price.
Games with no opponent at all
The fastest way to remove opening theory is to remove the person playing it. These two are chess-shaped puzzles: the board is a lock, and you are the key.
Chessformer
Chessformer’s own store page tells you the enemy king “is lazy and never moves, so don’t worry about losing any pieces”. Pieces move as you expect and then fall under gravity, stacking on each other, so every level is a physical stacking problem dressed in chess clothes. I stalled hard on the first level that needs two pieces stacked, and what unstuck me was thinking about ladders instead of chess. This is the single best purchase on this page for someone who flinches at the word “chess”. It came out in January 2022, and its 321 reviews are 99.7% positive (as of August 2026).
Chessarama
Eight separate games built on chess movement with the goals swapped out: a Sokoban puzzle where a queen shoves pieces around, a pawn escorting itself past a dragon, chess-flavoured street soccer. Steam lists 100+ levels for it, plus a classic chess mode at the end that you can ignore forever. Chessarama is the one to buy if you actually do want to end up better at chess, but only as a side effect.
Chess roguelikes, where theory has no time to matter
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. Openings do not survive that structure, because the board is never set up the same way twice. I keep the longer list at best chess roguelikes.
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
Shotgun King is the pick for a total beginner because it deletes your army: you are a lone black king with a shotgun, and each turn you either move or shoot. The upgrade screen after every floor hands one card to you and one to the enemy, so every buff you take also arms the board against you, and choosing which way to get worse is where I spend the entire run. With 7,403 reviews it is by far the most reviewed game on this list, and it is the one your chess-playing friend has probably also heard of.
Pawnbarian
You hold a hand of cards, each card moves your hero like one chess piece, and the board is a small dungeon of monsters with no enemy army anywhere on it. Runs are 15 to 30 minutes, and its developer states there are no permanent unlocks, so a bad run costs you nothing but the run, which is the reason I keep restarting it at midnight. Pawnbarian is the gentlest of the roguelikes, and its store page makes the promise this whole article is about: “Pick up the basics instantly if you’re familiar with chess, or learn in minutes if you aren’t.”
Passant: A Chess Roguelike
Passant keeps full board battles and then hands you rule-breaking pieces like the Dragon Knight, plus items that freeze or demote an enemy. Its difficulty setting is the opponent’s own playing strength, which the developer frames as covering “beginners and grandmasters alike”, and no other game on this page gives you that dial. Usurper’s ten difficulty levels, further down, tune how punishing a run is, which is a different knob. It sits at 79.9% positive across 369 reviews, and the complaints are mostly about difficulty spikes. Pick this one if you want something close to real chess without the study.
Gambonanza
“Forget traditional chess and embrace the chaos of breaking the balance,” says its store page, and it means it. The win condition is capturing every piece on a tiny board, you buy tile upgrades and 150+ gambits that rewrite the rules, and you lose by running out of moves. It released in May 2026, the newest game here, and already has 1,613 reviews. Gambonanza is the choice for someone who wants the chessboard turned into a slot machine.
The Ouroboros King
The Ouroboros King is the most direct answer to this article’s question, because its Steam page states the promise in one line: “No need to learn any chess openings or study anything.” You assemble an army from classic and fairy chess pieces, move one piece per turn, and pick up relics between fights. Runs are 15 to 45 minutes and nothing is locked behind progression.
Deckbuilders that put the cards on the board
If cards feel friendlier than a chessboard, these two hide the chess inside a deck. A chess deckbuilder is a game where you play cards onto a chessboard instead of moving a fixed army: cards summon pieces, cast spells or upgrade what is already there, and the deck grows across a run.
Usurper
You never set up a position here. You push your king forward, spend Power, and play unit cards onto the front line, and there are four factions, 13 bosses and 10 difficulty levels behind that loop. Usurper asks the least chess knowledge of anything on this list, and it was the only game here I understood without reading a word of anything. It is also the thinnest sample on the page at 48 reviews, so the score is an early reading and could move in either direction.
Chess: The Lost Pieces
Its 30+ pieces include a pawn that has to charge before moving and a queen that captures whatever captures it, and the roguelike story mode builds your army as you go. Chess: The Lost Pieces is worth the money only if drafting weird pieces excites you more than polish does. At 22 reviews it is the least proven game on this page, and I would buy it last.
Variants that make everyone a beginner again
Chess Remix
“Love chess but tired of memorising openings?” is how its Steam blurb opens, which is the exact complaint this page started from. It collects Shogi, Xiangqi, Janggi, Makruk, Hnefatafl and historical variants like Chaturanga, all restyled to look like the chess you already recognise, and six unfamiliar rule sets is its own answer to the opening problem. I went further into that idea in chess variants in video games. The catch is real: 10 reviews, a Mixed score, and its online play needs other people to be online. Buy it for the single-player variant tour and expect the lobbies to be empty.
Two to skip if openings are the problem
| Game | Steam price (as of August 2026) | Why not this one |
|---|---|---|
| 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel | $11.99 | Brilliant, and it assumes you can already read a normal board before adding time travel |
| Gambetto | $4.99 | Its Steam categories list multiplayer and PvP only, so you are back across the table from a human |
I recommend both of these to people who already play chess.
Where our own game sits
Our own Hellmate sits beside this list rather than on it. It is roguelike deckbuilding chess set in the seven floors of Hell: every floor belongs to a deadly sin, every sin crowns its own king, and you summon pieces and cast spells with mana to melt that king’s HP before your turns run out. It is scheduled for 19 January 2027, so it is unreleased and there is nothing to point at yet in the way of player numbers, and the pitch is the one this page is built on: chess pieces, no opening theory.
Quick answers
Can you enjoy a chess video game without knowing openings?
Yes. Each game here removes the opponent, scrambles the board before you sit down at it, replaces setup with a card draw, or swaps in a rule set nobody has memorised, and The Ouroboros King puts that promise on its own Steam page.
Which chess game is easiest for a complete beginner?
$4.99 buys the easiest one on this page. Chessformer has no opponent, no clock and no way for a memorised line to be used against you, so the only skill it tests is spatial reasoning.
Do these games make you better at real chess?
No, not at the part you are worried about. Chessarama is the only one built to teach, and its lessons stop at movement and tactics, so it will not help you survive move four against a studied player.
How much should I expect to spend?
$4.99 to $14.99. Nothing on this page is a full-price release, and six of the ten cost under ten dollars at their regular Steam price.
