5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel 

All the odd stuff in my steam library, in alphabetical order – Part 1

We’ve all got loads of shit in our Steam libraries, right? Sales and bundles and whatnot? I’ve been wanting to try and actually do some reviews and some critical writing, and while I was at it, why not knock another one off the list and give some time to the games I own that I’ve never played or barely touched?

Because no one needs me to review Skyrim (because we’ve all played it), Helldivers 2 (great game, could do with even an attempt at optimisation, I swear it runs worse every time I go back to it), or Battlefield 6 (I like it, but I’ve moved to Linux, so I can’t run the thing unless I cram it into the remaining space on my “just in case” Windows partition), so I’ll skip those if and when I get to them. 

First in the list is “5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel”, a game I picked up on launch purely to support such a bonkers concept. I played this a little when I first got it and, honestly, my brain isn’t advanced enough for this game. 

The core concept is that you start out playing a normal game of chess. Sometimes it might even end as a normal game of chess. However, that’s assuming that this game’s grand gimmick doesn’t kick in, and the computer opponent is very keen to use it. Especially if you think you’re being clever and are about to win. In all the games I’ve played while writing this, only once did the game end without a timeline branch or time travel checkmate. 

If you know how to play chess, you know enough of the basics to get started with this. Honestly, if you don’t, I wouldn’t recommend this as an intro to chess. Just don’t. There will be better places to learn. The fundamental chess rules are all intact, just with this mind-bending additional layer pasted on top. In this version of chess, pieces move in the normal directions, but also through time and between timelines. The pieces move through time and dimensions in a way that almost makes sense as being their regular moves just in a different direction, as represented in the game’s different presentations of the match timeline. It’s surprisingly difficult to explain. 

Here, for example, I’d made an absolute hash of the game. Just a few moves before the branch I’d blundered my queen, I couldn’t even reach the opponent’s kings in the past without creating more timelines because he’d decided to play on in the present (which is a thing). And then I just won out of nowhere because my bishop happened to check three moves into the past (three squares in two directions, left and backwards in time). 

And here, by contrast, I lost in the early game, because the enemy queen came out, and my king was too exposed in the past. In fact, I’ve noticed the AI favouring flank pawn starters presumably for this reason. I’m not a great players, but I’ve learned enough basics to try and take the centre, and that is not necessarily the best way to go here. Certainly not starting with the king’s pawn. 

The past cannot be changed. So moving a piece back in time creates a branch timeline, which runs concurrently. Eventually it may catch up to the original timeline sufficiently for you to move pieces between them. Also, if the current “present” is in the past you can jump pieces to the future. 

This all sounds confusing as all hell, and at times it is. Your objective, checkmate the enemy king, expands to “checkmate any instance of the enemy king at any point in the past or present”. In fact, something the game’s puzzle library really wants to drive into your head is it’s usually easier to checkmate into the past. The historical king cannot move, because it didn’t before, so you can only be stopped by taking your checking piece in the present, or by sending Kyle Reese a piece even further back in time to create a new branch timeline. 

Of course, if you get checked in the present, just have your king flee into the past or a parallel timeline, he can move one space in any number of directions, after all, and backwards in time is a direction. Now you potentially have two kings on one board, and no king on another. 

Once the present catches up, this does have a habit of creating some very confusing board states, where there are three queens on one board, and a scattering of pieces on another. But then, this just gives you more space to manoeuvre to jump across to whichever concurrent timeline has an enemy king on it, or just check directly across timelines. 

I’ve mentioned the game’s chess puzzles, and I’d thoroughly recommend starting with them. They’re every bit as frustrating as normal chess puzzles, but they’re useful as it requires you to think in the game’s way, and not normal chess’s way. I did them, but I needed to consult a guide for a lot of them, and there’s a few I still didn’t understand after I did them. They’re also the closest thing the game has to a tutorial. 

I’ll spoil one of the most basic ones here. It’s a simple mate in one. 

Now, you can’t just check the king normally, because it will either take your rook, or move away. So, what’s the solution? 

You move onto a space the king was in in the past, because a rook can move any number of squares “in one direction” (and backwards in time is a direction, as is between concurrent timelines) and it’s now checking the king three turns ago. The king you’re checking can’t move away; it’s a historical fact. It can only be stopped by taking the rook in the present, and the present king can’t get there in time. 

In fact, I would say that even a normal game of chess in here is effectively a puzzle. The longer it goes on the more timelines there will be, and the greater the chance that you or your opponent will win by simply having a queen on a spot with a long diagonal line of sight through empty squares in various timelines to somewhere a king currently is. 

Should you get it? If you don’t know how to play chess, or the above just sounds excruciating, then no. If you like chess puzzles or just want to try something that uses a game you already know to challenge you to think in a new way, then yes. 

Right now, it’s just under a tenner on Steam, and even if all you ever do is play the occasional bot game, it’s a genuinely interesting experience. If an occasionally mind bending one.