Playing SOLO
Playing SOLO
Chess is my favorite game in the world. But there is one problem with it. You need someone else to play with. Playing chess on a board by yourself gets kind of sad after a while. But I have been able to find a chess variation that you can play offline. Now, you might be wondering about playing bots offline, but I think playing the bots gets tiring after a while. This is a different alternative. It is called Solo Chess.
Rules
The rules are fairly simple. You are generated a puzzle, where all the pieces are white, and your objective is to capture all of the pieces until one piece remains. However, each piece can only move twice, and if a king is on the board, it has to be the piece that remains. Challenge mode is when you are given 30 puzzles, with 3 puzzles in each level up to level 10, where you try to get each puzzle correct.
Challenge Mode
Level 1
The first level is fairly straightforward. There is a knight and rook, and the rook is in the knight's line of vision. So in order to complete the puzzle, you would capture the rook with your knight, leaving the knight as the only piece on the board.
The second question of the first level has a king and pawn. The pawn can easily be captured by the king, and this leaves the king as the necessary remaining piece.
Final question of the first level is the same deal. King will take on the pawn. Have the hang of it?
Level 2
The second level is also fairly easy. You'll see that there are now two pieces to capture. But remember that pieces can capture twice. So the king has to simply play Kxb4 and Kxb3, giving just enough moves to leave the king as the sole piece.
The next question requires a specific sequence. You must take the rook with the knight at some point because the only way for the knight to be captured is with the queen, which leaves the queen unable to be captured, or for the knight to capture on f7. Nxf7 or Qxf7 followed by Nxf7 both work.
The final question of level two shows the idea of a common point. I call it a common point because it is the square that many pieces of a puzzle have a line of sight on. In this case, both knights can jump onto d8 to solve the puzzle.
Level 3
Looking at the next puzzle, you can see that the knight can be captured with the queen, but this would leave the light bishop being without any way to be captured. Thus, in this puzzle, the light square bishop needs to be captured by the knight, or the queen captures the bishop and is captured by the knight. I solved this puzzle by capturing both bishops with my knight and finishing with Qxg3.
In the next puzzle, the king is present. However, there is a rogue bishop. There is only one way to capture it, which is through the queen. However, the queen has to get within line of sight of the king for the king to capture it. Therefore, the queen moves a second time to capture the second bishop on b5 and is captured by the king.
The next puzzle has a bishop, which can't be captured. This is a sign that the bishop has to be the one capturing. You will also notice that the knight on b6 can only be captured by the rook or by the bishop moving twice. Thus, the sequence I found was for the bishop to use its only line of sight first to take the knight on a5 and double move to capture on b6, followed by Rxb6.
Level 4
Level 4 is when things start getting a little tricker. You will see the bishop on f1 can't be captured. So it has to capture on e2. The king can only move twice, so one move thing has to be captured, whether that is rook taking either bishop or the bishop taking the other bishop. But after either capture, the king can simply walk to take both as long as the two remaining pieces are chained.
In this puzzle, the bishop is unable to be captured, so it has to take the rook on g7. This leaves the rook unable to capture, and the only rook that has sight on it won't be able to come back. This leaves two main options. I decided to use g7 as a connect point and take my rook on g2 to capture and my queen to move twice: first Qxb2 and then Qxg7. The other is for the queen and b2 rook to capture on g2, and then use the second move to take on g7.
The next puzzle is fairly simple. The king has to take in its vicinity, and all the pieces have line of sight on b6, so all the pieces capture on b6, leaving the king to take also.
Level 5
The next puzzle is more difficult. Obviously, the bishop has to take on g1, but the queen can't get overloaded because it has to make one move to take c2. This leaves the queen only one square to return, which is h2. This means, all pieces have to converge on h2, which the knight has sight of and the bishop can use its second move to get to.
The next puzzle has a king, which means the final connect point has to be in its box. The e2 knight has to capture on f4 and the bishop has to capture on g4, but this leaves three pieces. The bishop capturing a knight would leave the two pieces disconnected, preventing the king from completing capture, but either knight can capture each other and allow the king to walk two spaces and complete the puzzle.
Next puzzle is easier. The queen on e6 has to take the knight because it can't be captured. This leaves this queen and all the other pieces a common square in their line of vision, which is a2. Still keeping up?
Level 6
The bishop in this puzzle is stranded and has to capture d2. The king also has to have its box to capture. Luckily, the knights both have eyes on the pieces within the king's box with the bishop also being able to use its second move to capture c3. From there, the king can easily pick up the two remaining pieces.
This puzzle requires precision in the order of capture. The bishop on h7 needs to take on g8, but the bishop on c4 shouldn't hastily just capture the two other bishops because it has to return to b3, where the king can recapture. The bishop on h7 should capture on g8 and capture on f7, allowing the bishop on c4 to now only have one piece to capture and saving the second capture for the way back. The king can now easily take the two remaining pieces.
As the levels increase, as do the different solutions available. In this puzzle, there are a few different ways to solve it, but the way I did it was realizing that the knight on c1 could only be captured by Q on c5. After this capture, all the pieces had a line of sight on either g1 or g2, which allows the king to simply capture the pieces that remain on these two suqares.
Level 7
This is where things start getting really difficult. The knights seem to be awkwardly placed with the queen on g7 unable to move, as this leaves the rook stranded. However, this puzzle requires two step thinking. What square can every piece reach in two moves? This results in every piece being able to reach g7 in two moves. The knight's strange L movement makes it a bit difficult to see, but they can capture on f5 and h5 to both reach g7. The rook has one straight path, and the queen on a2 can reach g2 and then g7.
In this puzzle, the rook on b2 has to capture on b8, as there are no other ways for the piece to be captured. Additionally, this move leads to every piece on the board having e8 in their line of sight, resulting in an easy solve.
In this puzzle, the main focus is on the knights. The only way for the knights to go is for each to capture each other. If the knight on e2 captures, both knights are stranded, so the knight on f4 must capture the e2 knight, leaving all the pieces on the board with a common point. If you can find the common point in a puzzle, it becomes easier to solve. In this case, all the pieces have eyes on g1.
Level 8
In this puzzle, both knights must capture. The knight on c1 can't be taken by the rook because this results in the rook being stranded. Thus, after Nxb3, a common point emerges. This common point is on d4, where all pieces have a line of sight on (are you starting to see the pattern here).
This puzzle has several different solutions, as well as different traps. The way I solved it was to treat the queen on b8 as though it were a king and try to get two remaining pieces that it could easily gobble up. This came in the form on a6 and a7. The knights first capture on these squares, the bishop on g2 needs to capture b7 and second capture on a6, allowing the second bishop and queen on f1 to capture on a6, leaving the queen on b8 to pick up the pieces.
This puzzle has a lot of different factors. The knight on a7, has to take the rook, but this also forces the knight to take on b6. The knight on c4 does have eyes on b6. But now, you have to see the two steps. The bishop can also reach b6 by first taking c5. The queen can't take c5 because it has to receive the rogue knight on h6 and then take b6, allowing the king to capture.
Level 9
Now, this puzzle took me a moment to find. I was looking at c4 as the common point. The problem, however, is that the dark bishop can't be captured. This means that the dark bishop has to capture. Well, the end of the dark bishop's range is d6, which many pieces have eyes on. The g7 knight can get there by capturing the light bishop and having eyes on d6. The queen and rook on the a file can also get there by the queen first capturing a6 and then the a1 rook taking a6, allowing a second move to d6.
This is where things get really complicated. The queen needs to be taken by the knight, which leaves many pieces having eyes on h8. But h1 and h2 have pieces that need to be captured. This results in the rook on d1 taking h1 and the rook on h6 taking h2, allowing either rook on h1 or h2 taking the other. This allows the rook on c8 to take h8 and either h1 or h2.
This puzzle involves a lot of loose pieces. The rook on f4 needs to be collected by the bishop and the rook on h2 needs to take the queen, or else the queen gets isolated. The knight on d2 needs to take the bishop on b3 with the other two knights colliding onto e3, leaving the queen on b7 to come in and have all the pieces converge onto b3.
Level 10!
This puzzle requires a clearing of the rook on f5 to reveal a path for the bishop on g4 to capture c8. Many pieces can converge to c8. But the bishop on g6 needs to get captured, so the knight on e7 captures and gets to h8, where the rook on d8 captures h8 and moves a second time to c8, where the king can now walk over to and capture.
This puzzle is actually simplier because all the pieces are easily able to converge unto d5 and c5, where the king can pick them up. The dark bishop has to be picked up by the knight on g4 and the rook on h5 has to be picked up by the queen, and from there, the other pieces can converge.
The final puzzle requires some clever knight movement with the knight on h1 finding a way to make its way to h5. The knight on h3 needs to pick up the rook to get to h5, and from there several pieces go to h5 and the last piece has to be a rook or queen, which can make a second move to h4, where it can be picked up by the queen on e1.
But what are your thoughts on SOLO Chess? Let me know!
