No sign-up, no download, no ads. Works on desktop and phones, and can be installed as an offline app.
Features
| |
|---|
| ♜ Every piece kills differently | Pawns jab, rooks ram, knights stomp, bishops fire a holy beam, queens explode in a royal nova, and kings turn their victim into gold coins. |
| 🤖 14 bots, 100 → 2800 Elo | From Pip ("Is this the pointy horse?") to Moki Engine ("No mercy. No mistakes."). The top bots run a real search engine in a Web Worker. |
| ♟ Real chess rules | Castling, en passant, promotion with a piece picker, draws by threefold repetition, the 50-move rule and insufficient material. |
| ⏱ Chess clocks | 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes per side, or off. Resign with a double tap. |
| 🧱 Two themes | A wooden club board, or a Minecraft-style blocky world with glowing-eyed obsidian pieces, trees, torches and a pond. |
| 💥 Checkmate blast | Mate the king and every piece and tile goes flying while the board burns. |
| 📝 Live scoresheet | Every move is written in proper notation (Nbd2, exd6, cxb8=N) on a clipboard next to the board. |
| 👥 Play a friend | Pass-and-play on one screen, with an optional auto-flip board. |
The bots
| Tier | Bots |
|---|
| Beginner | Pip 100 · Nora 250 · Biscuit 400 |
| Novice | Otto 600 · Mira 800 · Dev 1000 |
| Intermediate | Juno 1200 · Sasha 1400 · Kai 1600 |
| Advanced | Ravi 1800 · Elara 2000 |
| Master | Viktor 2200 · Grandmaster 2500 · Moki Engine 2800 |
The Elo numbers are labels for the ladder, not measured ratings. Lower bots search less deeply, add noise to their move scores and sometimes play a random move; the Master tier plays the engine's best move with a few seconds to think.
Controls
- Tap or click a piece, then a glowing square.
- Drag to turn the board, pinch or scroll to zoom.
- Menu → Settings for theme, clock, graphics quality, sound, hints and effects.
Run it locally
It's plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no build step. Serve the folder with any static server:
python -m http.server 8000
Then open http://localhost:8000. Opening index.html straight from disk also works; the engine then runs on the main thread instead of a Web Worker.
Libraries load from CDNs: three.js r128, anime.js and Motion, plus Google Fonts.
The engine
js/engine.js is a from-scratch chess engine:
- 0x88 board with make/unmake and Zobrist hashing
- Principal variation search with a transposition table, null-move pruning, late move reductions, futility and reverse futility pruning, check extensions
- Move ordering with MVV-LVA, killer moves and a history table
- Quiescence search with delta pruning
- PeSTO tapered piece-square evaluation, plus bishop pair, pawn structure, rook files, king shelter and a mop-up term for winning endgames
- Repetition and 50-move draw detection inside the search
It passes the standard perft suites and searches around a million positions per second on a desktop.
Project structure
index.html page shell and menus
css/style.css UI, both themes
js/01-config.js settings and helpers
js/02-rules.js move generation and game rules
js/03-scene.js three.js scene, boards, pieces, blocky world
js/04-state.js game state, bot ladder, scoresheet
js/05-fx.js highlights and small effects
js/06-moves.js moves, kill animations, checkmate blast
js/07-ai.js talks to the engine worker
js/08-ui.js HUD, clock, camera and input
js/09-boot.js render loop, settings and bot picker
js/10-pwa.js offline install
js/engine.js chess engine (Web Worker)
sw.js service worker for offline play
Credits
Made by Rishav Ranjan and M Gyaani at Moki Studio.
License
The code is released under the MIT License.
The Gambit name, the Moki name and the Moki mascot artwork (moki.png) are Moki Studio's branding. Please don't use them to present a fork as the official game.
Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Synergies AB. Gambit is not affiliated with or endorsed by Mojang or Microsoft.
