Murder on the Chessboard
Murder on the Chessboard
Chess meets murder mystery! Solve the murder cases by logical deduction.
When and where did the murder happen?
Who has murdered the king?
Rules
Find the perpetrator along with the time & room of the murder!
Rule of Movement
Each piece moves every time step according to their standard chess rules. Multiple pieces can occupy the same square.
Rule of Darkness
During darkness, the sound icons indicate places where at least one piece has moved to.
Corpses make no sound.
Rule of Murder
The murder happened in darkness a room where the king was alone with exactly one other piece (the perpetrator wanted no witnesses).
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Made by Vadim (varzival) mynerdyhobby.com
Powered by PixiJS
| Updated | 17 days ago |
| Status | Prototype |
| Platforms | HTML5 |
| Rating | Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars (5 total ratings) |
| Author | Varzival |
| Genre | Puzzle |
| Made with | PixiJS |
| Tags | 2D, Chess, mobile, Singleplayer, Touch-Friendly |
| Average session | About a half-hour |
| Inputs | Mouse, Touchscreen |
| Links | Blog |
| Content | No generative AI was used |
Development log
- New Puzzles: A Knife in the Dark32 days ago
- New Poison Puzzles46 days ago
- Reduced the jank50 days ago

Comments
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Fun concept and art style!
If you don’t mind feedback, I had some UI complaints: the textbox text constantly changing size/wrapping was very distracting, and when I was dragging a chess piece, I expected to drop it so its base would land on the target square, but I guess my finger had to land on the target square instead. On mobile, I didn’t love having to zoom in and out of the different times - it would be nice to always have one board centered, but with a timeline that lets me switch or scrub between which time period shows.
Keep it up, this is fun flavor and an interesting game!
Hey Celia, thank you very much for your detailed feedback! In fact my next update will be a collection of small UI improvements. So feel free to follow the project since there is more stuff coming :D
Interesting concept and good game, I like it.
Thank you very much! Also great that you've followed since there are more updates coming :D
Wonderful idea, also fun to play. The puzzles are engaging and the visuals are really cute, especially the scribble versions. Some levels are too easy and most of the time it's rather obvious who took the king out. Hope to see more complexity in the future levels.
Nevertheless, I really did have a great time playing it! :))
Thank you, glad to hear that you like the idea :D
As a matter of fact, I just released a new puzzle concept that should make the puzzles significantly harder, check it out! https://varzival.itch.io/chessboard/devlog/1506360/new-poison-puzzles
So you see, it's worth it to follow me and the project updates, lots of good stuff coming in the future!
I’m always hyped for more fresh puzzle games, and this one has a cool premise, unique art and I’ve never played anything like it!! I’m very interested to see where it’ll go! Also very nice to meet you today, Vadim, wish you all the best with this :)
Thank you so much for taking the time to play and comment! I have a few more ideas cooking so keep an eye out for updates ;-)
All the best wishes for Tiny Bookshop and your other future endeavours!
And huge congrats for winning the price for best debut game!! I'm so happy for you :)
I love this game, but its too easy imo. The game is really well made though so no complaints on that end.
Hope you continue working on this or at least make more games :D
Great to hear that you love the game!! Thank you so much for the encouragement.
My journey with Murder on the Chessboard is not over yet, stay tuned for harder challenges!
very cute! it was very fun and i loved the graphics, i could figure out most of the puzzles without filling most of them in bc there was only one spot where the muder could happen (usually the panel before the last one) and then you can just figure out which character could have been there by backtracking from the last panel, but that's part of the fun i guess
imo it could use more of a difficulty spike since they felt a bit easy, but it's lovely for what it is as well!
Thank you so much for playing my litte prototype <3
Yes, higher difficulty puzzles are definitely on my list, some ideas:
- you also need to give alibis for the other pieces
- you don't know the last position and have to track from the front without knowing the king's final spot
- King is poisoned instead of knifed and moves after the murderer has struck
Stay tuned for more :D