Rooklite

A chess roguelite where every battle is a small board hidden inside a map that is a chessboard too. This free demo is the complete first world, Tide, from the first leap to its boss.

★ Wishlist Rooklite on Steam ★
The full game has four worlds and four kings. A wishlist is the best way to help it.

Your knight leaps forward square by square, and the road crumbles behind it. Every rival camp is a whole half-board sitting inside one square of the map: reach it and the camera dives in until that little board is the one you fight on. Battles, elites, shops, forges, challenges and the pages of a gamebook: choose your path, because there is no way back.

Your army is a deck. Each battle draws three pieces plus your king and drops them wherever they land. No theory, no formations: read the board and play what you got.

Every battle starts at 30 seconds and adds two with each move. Premoves let you play as fast as you think. Only checkmate wins; if your clock runs out, so does your run.

Four worlds, four kings. The first is a plain one; the others sweep the diagonals, leap like knights or stride like queens. Beat a world's king and your king learns its move.

The pieces you defeat offer themselves as recruits. Upgrade them, fuse two into one or burn the ones that weigh you down. Relics bend the rules and terrains change the board.

Nothing is explained ahead of time. Lights that help you, Shadows that raise the stakes, and trophies for the things only a few players try: you discover every rule by playing.

• A complete roguelite run: four worlds, with elites and a boss in each
• A map that is a chessboard, with battles that are boards inside it
• Six piece types, four special kings, relics, upgrades and terrains
• One life; you can quit a run and continue it later
• Hand-made candlelit pixel art, and original music that keeps time with the clock

• Not tournament chess: no openings or rating required.
• Not a card game: your deck is pieces on a real chessboard.
• No purchases, no connection: the whole game, offline.

The demo is the first world. The full game, coming in early 2027, adds three more worlds, three special kings and everything they unlock. Add Rooklite to your Steam wishlist to hear the moment it launches.

Languages: English, Español, Português (Brasil), Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Polski, Русский, 日本語, 简体中文, 한국어. Play with mouse, keyboard or gamepad. In the browser your run is saved on this device.