When you think of chess as a game, you are thinking of one of the most well-known historical turn-based games created. I have seen many (and most notably lately) versions of this board game, but unlike the traditional version, they have all been done through unique and creative twists.
Only a few hours ago, Humble launched a new PC bundle focused on chess and chess-based strategic games entitled Checkmate! A Chess Games Collection. The collection includes games that follow the same traditional rules as chess and those that create an entirely different structure than traditional chess, and in some cases, use narrative design, roguelike elements or even Final Fantasy Tactics-style gameplay
The bundle will be sold as a single Tier for $12, and will run until April 8th, 2026. Humble’s Checkmate! bundle includes 11 Steam games; including a wide array of games that have taken the format of traditional digital chess and adapted it to include elements of roguelike, puzzle, and tactical gameplay.
The Checkmate! bundle supports World Central Kitchen, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help communities around the world provide fresh meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.
Chessarama
Chessarama is less a single game and more a themed anthology. Chessarama contains eight chess-inspired puzzle and strategy games, each with their own rules, theme, and carefully constructed challenges.
Additionally, it incorporates collectibles, leaderboards, Daily Challenges, Weekly Challenges, and over 200 levels, along with 200 additional challenge-stages. Therefore, it would appear to be the best choice for players who enjoy chess ideas, but would prefer to see them expressed through a variety of different formats, as opposed to a single long campaign.
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel is the most radical interpretation of all in this bundle. It takes the basic movement of the individual pieces and transposes them over time; across multiple boards; and through branching timelines.
Which means a move isn’t merely about claiming territory on one board, it’s about protecting kings across multiple iterations of the same match. Essentially, it moves away from classical tempo and focuses more on maintaining a chess position that splits off into ever-increasing branches whenever you touch the past.
Pawnbarian
Pawnbarian reduces chess logic down to the smallest possible size, creating short, tightly wound roguelike runs centered around cards, and very small dungeon boards.
As you move your hero across the board like a chess piece, you use a drawn card to determine your movements, and attempt to outmaneuver monsters with their own terrible movement patterns. This creates a high level of puzzle rhythm throughout, even though Pawnbarian technically fits the frame of a roguelike.
Chess Ultra
Chess Ultra has the most standard gameplay in this bundle, however it does lean heavily towards presentation, and competitive framework.
It retains the underlying principles of the classic game, yet presents those principles with 4K visuals, Grand Master approved AI, ten difficulty levels, and both local and online multiplayer with an Elo rating system.
In essence it serves as the most traditional representation in the bundle of digital chess unobstructed by other forms of genre twisting.
The Ouroboros King
The Ouroboros King attempts to take the same idea of the Slay the Spire crowd, but instead applies it to chess
It combines standard and fairy chess pieces with relics, consumables, and varying rogue-like style runs, then tasks the player with building a viable army, in which every turn counts, because only one piece can move at a time. Therefore, it is more about synergy, unit values, and the distance a good build can carry a run until the difficulty increases significantly.
Gambit Shifter
Gambit Shifter, on the other hand, takes a much quieter approach with a minimalist puzzle game in which the player controls a single piece, progresses through over eighty carefully crafted stages, and progressively unlocks new movement options and mechanisms such as moving platforms and hidden pathways.
Due to the fact that Gambit Shifter doesn’t require prior knowledge of chess and allows the player to undo previous mistakes, it has been designed to encourage experimentation as opposed to punishment and, therefore, could be considered to be one of the more accessible titles within the bundle.
Dark Chess
Dark Chess brings the board to a darker atmosphere by incorporating fog of war, traps, puzzles, and a story driven campaign. The central premise is that your opponent will cheat. Therefore, the tension is generated by the lack of visibility and by your reaction to a board that conceals many potential dangers.
It still has a clear basis in chess, but the inclusion of mystery, and scenario design, give Dark Chess a more campaign-like quality than a typical head to head battle.
Below the Crown
Below the Crown is a blend of chess with dungeon crawling and the roguelike structure. Additionally, it includes spells, psychological testing, and player-defined challenges.
This fusion provides a more adventurous look than most chess variants, due to the fact that the board is only a component of a larger run-based structure based upon risk, adaptability, and unconventional events. Having come from the developers of Duskers and A Virus Named TOM, it appears to be one of the bundle’s more experimental offerings.
WizardChess
WizardChess is probably the most chaotic title in the bundle. It refers to itself as a deck-building chess in a fantasy world.
It backs that claim up by providing Arcade and Story modes, 50+ unit classes, and the ability to provide stats and special attributes to the pieces rather than simply having them behave as flat tokens on the board. Recruiting, Upgrading, Sacrificing, Trading, and Gambling Units create a run-based structure that is similar to a Fantasy Tactics Roguelite, rather than traditional chess.
Usurper
Usurper utilizes a more overtly roguelike deck-builder. As the player advances the king to place cards on the front line, the player accumulates power to purchase stronger units, and draws cards to add to their deck.
The player upgrades the ruler and selects gambits that create powerful synergies. With Four Factions, 13 Bosses, Eight Starting Decks, Ten Difficulty Levels, and Online Multiplayer, Usurper seems to be one of the bundles’ more complex systems-driven games, as opposed to a simple puzzle-side-game.
The Rookery
The Rookery is another run-based Army Builder, but it seems to focus more on build-shaping. Each run asks the player to construct an army using pieces, relics, consumables, and buffs, then convert that chaos into a coherent force before facing off against 10 Bosses with unique abilities.
The Design Pitch is intriguing because it appears to be written in a manner that would allow a novice chess player to understand the game while simultaneously providing enough difficulty and item-interaction to challenge advanced players.
The bundle comes in a single tier. Players can purchase the entire bundle at the base price of $12, noting that the combined value of all 11 games is approximately $150, but if you are generous, you can offer more, and remember, it’s for a good cause.
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