Really Bad Chess on PC? 9 Games Like It on Steam
Updated October 2, 2026
Really Bad Chess is not on Steam
Updated October 2026.
Really Bad Chess has no Steam release, so on a PC you can play it in a browser through Puzzmo, where it runs as one of the site’s daily games. The App Store also lists it for Macs with an Apple M1 chip or later. Everywhere else it is a phone and tablet app. Zach Gage released it on iOS on 13 October 2016, and Noodlecake brought it to Android in May 2017, according to its Wikipedia entry. A search for it on the Steam store returns nothing (as of October 2026).
| Where to play Really Bad Chess | Platform | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Puzzmo | Browser, Windows or Mac | A new board every day |
| App Store | iPhone, iPad, and Macs with an Apple M1 chip or later | Free download, with a $3.99 Full Game Unlock that adds local versus play and removes ads (as of October 2026) |
| Google Play | Android | Free download, listed as containing ads and in-app purchases (as of October 2026) |
On a Mac, the App Store listing is the iPad version, and Apple marks it as not verified for macOS (as of October 2026), so treat it as a free thing to try rather than a sure thing. On a Windows PC, Puzzmo is the way to play the real thing, and everything I recommend below is a Steam game for that reason.
What the random pieces were actually for
Each side gets a king and 15 other pieces drawn at random, weighted by your skill level, so no two boards start the same and nobody can play a prepared line. Gage’s own App Store listing tells chess players “you’ll have to throw out your openings”, and it pitches the same twist to novices as a way to skip studying openings and go straight to learning how to checkmate.
That is the whole trade. Knowing how a knight moves is the entire entry fee, and none of the studying that makes someone good at chess helps you. So the filter for this list was narrow: chess movement in, chess homework out. A game that expects you to recognise an opening did not make it, however good it is.
One term comes up repeatedly below. 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. Most of the strong PC answers to this search are in that shape, and the full chess roguelike roundup covers the ones that are harder than what you are asking for.
Which one to buy
Buy Chessarama. It is the only game here with daily and weekly challenges, so it is the one that rebuilds the actual habit: a fresh board waiting for you, finished in one sitting, no run to commit an evening to. If the chaos was the part you liked, buy Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate. If you picked up Really Bad Chess because you are bad at chess and want no opponent at all, buy Chessformer. On a Mac, check the platform first: Chessarama, Chessformer, Passant and Chess: The Lost Pieces are Windows only on Steam (as of October 2026), so a Mac owner should start with Shotgun King, or Pawnbarian for something gentler.
| Game | Steam price (as of October 2026) | Steam reviews (as of October 2026) | What carries over from Really Bad Chess | What it expects you to know |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chessarama | $14.99 | Very Positive, 182 | Daily and weekly challenges, standard piece moves, new goals | Nothing. It teaches the moves inside the puzzles |
| Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate | $9.99 | Very Positive, 7,455 | A deliberately lopsided army | What “check” means |
| Pawnbarian | $9.99 | Very Positive, 903 | Small board, one problem at a time | How the six pieces move |
| Passant: A Chess Roguelike | $11.99 | Mostly Positive, 373 | Real matches against an AI | How the pieces move, at a difficulty you set |
| Gambonanza | $14.99 | Mostly Positive, 1,725 | Armies that should not be legal | How the pieces move, then how to break them |
| Chessformer | $4.99 | Very Positive, 323 | Pure puzzle, no opponent thinking back | How the pieces move. There is no opponent |
| The Ouroboros King | $9.99 | Mostly Positive, 580 | Assembling a strange army from nothing | How the pieces move |
| Usurper | $9.99 | Mostly Positive, 49 | Cards decide what reaches the board | Very little. The cards do the placing |
| Chess: The Lost Pieces | $7.99 | Mostly Positive, 22 | Pieces that do not exist in chess | How the pieces move |
Prices, review scores and review counts come from each game’s Steam store page, checked 2 October 2026. Prices are the regular US price, so a sale will show you less.
The nine, with what each one is for
Chessarama
Chessarama packs eight separate chess-inspired games under one roof, each keeping the standard piece moves and swapping the goal: in Dragon Slayers you walk a pawn down a path while a dragon attacks the board every time you move, in Lady Ronin a queen shoves pieces around a Sokoban board to reach a Shogun. Its store page lists 100+ levels plus 100+ challenges (as of October 2026), and the daily and weekly challenges are the closest thing on Steam to Puzzmo’s one new board a day. It also includes a classic chess mode that you can ignore forever. Chessarama is the one to buy if you do want to end up better at chess, but only as a side effect.
Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate
You are a lone black king with a shotgun against a full white army, and each turn you either move or shoot, then move again to reload. After every floor you choose between two random pairings of one upgrade for you and one upgrade for the enemy, a much more pointed version of the imbalance Really Bad Chess hands out at random. The only chess rule you need is what check means, and its store page puts a run at about twenty minutes. Buy it if the part you loved was the unfairness. There is a longer breakdown of it here.
Pawnbarian
One hero, a small grid full of monsters, and a hand of cards that decides which chess piece you are allowed to move like this turn. There is no enemy army anywhere on the board. Runs take 15 to 30 minutes and the developer lists no permanent upgrades on its store page, so a bad run costs you nothing but the run. Pawnbarian is the buy if you liked the size of a Really Bad Chess board more than the chess of it, and it is the gentlest roguelike on this list for someone who is bad at chess. Its store page makes the promise this whole page 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
You play matches against an AI and then break the rules between them, drafting pieces like the Archbishop and the Dragon Knight, picking up items that freeze a piece or demote it to a pawn, and taking twists such as atomic chess or zombie pawns. Passant is the one that still feels like playing chess, so it is the right buy if what you want is a whole game with the rules bent. Its store page promises increasing levels of AI difficulty, “so beginners and grandmasters alike can enjoy the game”. More in its shape are in games like Passant.
Gambonanza
Gambonanza is the best match for the specific moment of opening Really Bad Chess and finding eight knights. Winning a board means clearing every enemy piece off it, the board crumbles if you waste moves, and between rounds you spend money on 150+ gambits that rewrite the rules and on upgrades to individual tiles. Its own store page calls the combinations illegal, which is roughly the register. It released in May 2026, the newest of the nine.
Chessformer
Every piece moves the way it should, then falls until it lands, and pieces stack on each other, so a level is a route-finding problem built out of rook and bishop moves. Its store page says the enemy king never moves and tells you not to worry about losing pieces, so nothing here is playing against you. Its store page says stacking is the key to solving most levels. I stalled hard on the first level that needs two pieces stacked, and what unstuck me was thinking about ladders instead of chess. Chessformer is the cheapest thing on the list and the single best buy for someone who flinches at the word chess. It came out in January 2022, and 99.7% of its 323 reviews are positive (as of October 2026).
The Ouroboros King
The Ouroboros King has you assembling a force from classic and fairy chess pieces fight by fight, finding relics and buying gadgets between encounters. Its store page states the promise this list is built on, saying there is no need to learn openings or study anything, with 15 to 45 minute runs and everything unlocked from the start. It is the most conventionally deep chess roguelike here, and the one to buy if you liked being handed an odd army and wished you had picked it yourself.
Usurper
You never set up a position. You push your king forward so you can play cards nearer the front, stockpile Power to afford expensive units like the Queen and the Cannon, and draft your way through four factions, 13 bosses and 10 difficulty levels. Of the games with an opponent, Usurper asks the least chess knowledge, it is the buy if the deck interests you more than the board, and it is a chess deckbuilder in the strict sense. With 49 reviews (as of October 2026) it has one of the two thinnest counts on this list, so treat that row as a weak signal.
Chess: The Lost Pieces
Chess: The Lost Pieces invents pieces. Thirty-plus of them, including a rook that pulls distant pieces toward it, a knight that grows more mobile the longer it survives, a pawn that has to be charged before it moves, and a queen that captures whatever captured her. It is the roughest thing here and it earns its place because nobody else does that. Twenty-two reviews (as of October 2026) is not enough to tell you whether it holds up, so read that row of the table as a shrug rather than a score.
If you are bad at chess, start here
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, and every game on this page gets around it in one of five ways.
| How it removes the opening problem | Games |
|---|---|
| No opponent at all | Chessformer |
| Chess pieces, new goals | Chessarama |
| One piece against a board, not an army against an army | Shotgun King, Pawnbarian |
| A new board every run, so no line survives | Passant, Gambonanza, The Ouroboros King, Chess: The Lost Pieces |
| Cards do the setup | Usurper |
Start at the top of that table and work down. Chessformer at $4.99 (as of October 2026) is the lowest-risk way to find out whether chess-movement puzzles are for you at all, Shotgun King is the step up once you want something pushing back, and Passant is the last stop before real chess.
One more option sits outside the nine because it is a collection of whole rule sets from around the world rather than one chess game with a scrambled army. Chess Remix opens its Steam blurb with “Love chess but tired of memorising openings?” and answers with fast competitive online play in randomly chosen variants. The part that serves someone who is bad at chess is the single-player side: Shogi, Xiangqi, Janggi and Makruk, which the store says are styled to look like the chess you are used to, plus Hnefatafl and Chaturanga, and its feature list includes play against an AI. Unfamiliar rule sets put everyone back at move one. The catch is real: $14.99, Windows only, and a Mixed score from 10 reviews (as of October 2026). The online mode needs other players online at the same moment, so buy it for the single-player tour. Chess variants in video games goes further into that idea.
And one to skip: Gambetto looks like a small chess deckbuilder, but its Steam categories list multiplayer and PvP only, with no single-player tag (as of October 2026), so you are back across the table from a human who may know more than you.
The one that looks like a match and is not
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel is the usual suggestion on this question, and for a Really Bad Chess player it points the wrong way. Really Bad Chess takes rules away so that you can stop studying. 5D Chess adds a spatial, temporal and parallel dimension on top of chess and assumes you can already read a normal board, which means more to learn, not less. It is a fine game and it is the opposite errand. Other chess variants worth knowing covers where it fits.
Where our own game sits
Hellmate is ours, so it belongs beside this list rather than inside it. It is a roguelike deckbuilding chess game 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. The full game is unreleased, with a Steam date of 19 January 2027 for Windows and macOS, so there are no scores to judge it by yet. There is a demo on Steam now, and the store page has the rest.
Quick answers
Can I play Really Bad Chess on PC?
Yes, but not through Steam. In any browser, Puzzmo runs a daily Really Bad Chess board. On a Mac with an Apple M1 chip or later, the App Store lists it as available. It is the iPad version, and Apple marks it as not verified for macOS (as of October 2026).
Do I need to know chess to play the games on this list?
Only how the pieces move. None of them expects opening theory or any prepared study, and knowing how the six pieces move is enough to start every one. Chessarama goes furthest, since it teaches the moves inside its puzzles. Chessformer removes the opponent instead.
Will these games make me better at real chess?
No, not at the part most people worry about. Chessarama is the only one built to teach. Its store page lists movement, tactics and strategy, but no opening theory, so it will not help you survive move four against a player who studied openings.
Which of these work in five-minute sittings?
Two. Chessarama and Chessformer are built out of single boards that end when you solve them. A single Pawnbarian fight is short, but a run takes 15 to 30 minutes, Shotgun King about twenty and The Ouroboros King up to 45, so those want a proper sitting.
