Chesslantis

Chesslantis is an offline, singleplayer chess game in early development — and it's growing into a chess club manager. Think Football Manager or FIFA's career mode, but for chess: you'll run your own club, and — the big difference — actually sit down and play or train at the board yourself.

Right now, Chesslantis is more of a playground than a finished foundation. You can already take on a roster of 20 hand-crafted AI personalities, generate countless additional ones procedurally, and add the ones you like to your friends list. Every game is saved to a local database where you can analyse single matches or run batch analyses across many at once. The chess engine is a custom build written in C++ — no Stockfish under the hood.

The real foundation isn't done yet: tournaments in several formats are next, along with more training modes. Once those are in, the full career mode can follow.

The goal is to simulate a complete chess world — one where games against the AI feel as close to playing a human as possible. No online, no accounts, no subscriptions.

Chesslantis will be donation-ware: completely free for everyone, with payment entirely up to you. The dream? The perfect digital chess game for a desert island. :)

FAQ

When can I play it?

The first download will arrive once all tournament formats are implemented and running stably — that's the milestone for the initial release. No fixed date yet; I'd rather take the time to get it right than rush a half-baked version. Follow the project to be notified when it drops.

Why offline only? No online play?

Three reasons. First, no cheating — every game you play means something, because nobody on the other side is running an engine in another window. Second, privacy: your games, your stats, your training data stay on your machine. Nothing gets uploaded, no account, no telemetry. Third, the focus stays on what matters: AI opponents that feel close to playing humans, in a self-contained chess world that just works, without servers or subscriptions.

Which platforms will be supported?

Windows only. A Linux or macOS version isn't planned.

Can I follow development?

Yes — new gameplay videos go up weekly on YouTube, and bigger updates are posted as devlogs here on itch.io. Hit "Follow" above to get notified.