Quiet Move
Sometimes the best move takes nothing.
What it is
Chess by the official rules: castling, en passant, promotion to any piece, checkmate and stalemate, and a draw at once when too little is left to checkmate, such as king against king and bishop. Pick up a piece and every square it can reach lights up, a dot for a move that takes nothing and a ring for a capture. A quiet move is chess’s name for a move that takes nothing and gives no check, and it is often the strongest move on the board.
A piece that can’t move shakes, the panel says why, and the reason lights up: the piece pinning it to your king, the piece giving check, or the pieces guarding its squares. If it is simply blocked, the pieces that can move light up instead. Any other wrong tap says what to do instead.
Draws apply themselves: the same position three times, or 50 moves each with no capture and no pawn move. Before either rule ends a game, the panel warns that a draw is coming.
Play the computer, or sit two people at opposite ends of one phone or tablet; with two people, each side’s pieces face their owner. The computer chooses by searching the same rules, with no move list of its own, and how far it looks is counted in positions, never in seconds, so it plays just as well on a slow tablet as on a fast one. Its mistakes are real mistakes, not handicaps. It has four levels, and it gets stronger after you win and gentler after you lose. With nobody playing, the board plays itself at the computer’s strongest.
How to play
- Sit downTap the board
- Move a pieceTap it, then a lit square, or drag it
- CastleMove the king two squares, or tap the king, then the rook
- Add a second playerTwo players? Tap here
Tap the board to sit down at the near end, playing white; the board plays itself until you do. Tap one of your pieces to pick it up, then tap a lit square or drag the piece there; tap the piece again to put it back. When a pawn reaches the far end, tap the piece it becomes, or tap the square again for a queen. A second person taps Two players? Tap here at the other end and plays from there; that panel turns to face them. In a rematch the loser plays white, and after a draw the colours swap. To resign, tap Resign, then tap again. Put the phone down mid-game and it waits for you: nothing takes your seat away.
On a desktop, click or drag, just as by touch. Or use the keys: the arrow keys move a ring around the board, Enter or Space picks a piece up and puts it down, and Escape puts it back. 1 and 2 take the near and far seats, and M turns the sound on and off.
What isn’t settled yet
No take-back. A move is final once the piece lands.
No clock, ratings, puzzles or lessons: just games.
You can’t pick the computer’s strength. It steps up after you win and down after you lose, across four levels.
Even its strongest level looks at its own move, your reply and its next before it plays out the captures, so a plan longer than that can get past it.
The draw rules end the game by themselves. Over a real board, a player has to claim a draw by repetition or by the 50-move rule.
Two people at most, one at each end of the screen.
Build Log
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Build 2
The computer gained a top level that plays out every capture before it judges a position: up to six more captures, recaptures or answers to check past its own move, your reply and its next. A level that stops at those three can count a piece as won when the recapture comes one move later, and play straight into it. The top level sees each exchange through, so what it still misses are quiet moves beyond its horizon.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine — it draws to a plain canvas. The typefaces it does use are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Cover drawn from the game’s own pieces, board colours and lit squares.
Quiet Move is original work by Launchway Games.