I need help creating a new chess variant

Hi my name is jacob. Ive been playing chess since i was in high school. since the advent of computerized chess one thing has always caught my eye that was different than a regular chess board. The wacky fun new game modes people create like crazyhouse or Chess960. Well i have a new gamemode for you called Fog of war chess. It is standard chess only one difference you can only see your side of the board. You have to find your enemies pieces through intelligence gathering and proper forethought. Pieces can be seen only when adjacent or under threat by another piece. So it is up to the player to decide if they want to risk a special piece like a queen to see the entire board or do they want to risk a lowly pawn to see whats in front of them for safety. It makes players be more cautious about their moves and will prevent hyper agressive openings from taking even the most advanced players out of a game. I need your help Chess.com and staff to make this game mode a reality. Im not a tech savvy person nor am i well known im just a chess lover with a dream for making my own gamemode like Magnus did.

I can help you modify an existing chess program (only requirement: it has to run on HTML, CSS, and JS)

that sounds wonderful. and please let me know if there are any suggestions about improving the idea. or balancing a game. perhaps i could reveal the board after a game has gone on too long to keep everyone from just floundering in the dark against each other in endgame.

Question: Should I fill the unknown pieces with "?" or should I cover a whole area? Because the other player can guess what pieces they are based on the formation e.g. a line of pieces connected diagonally would probably be a pawn chain.

my idea was originally it would be just like blindfolded chess. you wouldnt see any of the enemies pieces. it makes you think about where your enemies pieces are and helps you memorize the board at deeper and deeper levels. its a trainer as much as a tough game. if a piece is seen by another you have to add that to your strategy. you could accidentally walk into your enemies pieces or you can build up a better view of your enemies strategy as a whole. knights, like all horses, will probably make for excellent scouts just like the feudal era in theory.

 i did send you a private message if you want to discuss this in further detail. im very grateful for you helping me make this. i want to make this work as much as possible. hopefully it becomes popular

How is this different from Dark Chess?

i honestly never seen dark chess til now. the difference is nobody can see the opposite side of the boards pieces at all. no X or greyed out pieces nothing is there. threate reveals pieces and adjacent pieces reveal even if they do not have an attack. the board reveals itself after a game has gone on for an undetermined number of turns to prevent it from going on forever. once fog of war is revealed the players continue the game as normal. its not the same as dark chess. it is a trainer for memorizing enemy troop movements and possible grid coordinates based upon extremely limited intel. a hard game even for a master yet still open to beginners to blunder their way through to victory

Well, in Dark Chess there also are no X or greyed-out pieces: you see only squares where you can move / capture to, or on which you are blocked, the rest is completely blacked out. I.e. anything that would affect your own moves. So squares diagonally adjacent to your Rooks would not automatically be visible, this seems to be different from what you propose. (And, frankly, I think the Dark-Chess way makes more sense.) In Dark Chess this is also not limited to half the board, but applies to the entire board. But that usually amounts to the same thing, as you tend to completely control your own board half. But in the end-game it would be no longer true.

But from what you say I gather that you are actually told what the opponent moves; otherwise there wouldn't be anything to remember. So that would make this just a less sever form of blindfold chess, not related to any of the variants with incomplete information.

i feel like id like to try this dark chess. how can i have a game with you? also i think the differences between our games is my game lets you see pieces even when you dont have an attack on them and adjacent. so a rook can see diagonally one space away. 

@jacobmosovich's chess variant "Fog of War" has been added to the Chess.com Beta with a whole bunch of other chess variants! Go check it out: https://www.chess.com/news/view/introducing-new-chess-variants

Wohoo!