People are actually Playing Molechess

The State of the MoleVerse

Hello lichess users,

As I once blogged about, Molechess is a team chess variant that I created well over a year ago but, like so many chess variants and especially those that require more than two players, had difficulties establishing a consistent pool of players. Perhaps part of the trouble is my unwillingness to advertise the game to a larger audience until I felt the server was stable, but also " Chess meets AmongUs" is an admittedly somewhat niche idea. In any event, I figured it would basically only serve as an occasionally fun diversion on streams of mine but have discovered that people have been actually playing it since at least November. In light of this surprising development, I've decided to explain some of the changes I've made since and some ideas for how the game could possibly evolve in the future.

MoleChess Basics

My previous blog post (see link above) details this in, well, detail, but a quick summary would be that MoleChess is a game of chess with teams of at least three players on each side. Each turn team members may vote for a move and one of those moves will be randomly selected and played. The twist here is that each team has a "mole" who is trying to lose the game and therefore will usually try and subtly vote for bad moves. Teams can attempt to vote out a mole, which occurs when everyone (other than the accused) accuses a teammate. If player accused was the mole, they then defect to the opposing team where they become a regular player. If the player was innocent, then the mole is now immune from being voted off and can openly vote for terrible moves with impunity.

The MoleChess Web Client/App

Navigation

The menu bar on the far left lets you access three areas: the Lobby (the drink icon), the Main Game Screen (the horsey), and Settings (the cog wheel). I might change the Lobby icon to something else at some point. Suggestions are (probably) welcome. :)

The Lobby

The (redesigned) Lobby now shows all games sorted by which phase they are in: forming, running, and finished. Join a game by either selecting the game (by clicking anywhere on it that's not a icon) and then clicking "Join" from the menu above, or by clicking the enter icon on the left. Currently there is no way to select a color - you will be assigned a team and color when the game begins.

The Main Game Screen

The Game Screen for any game shown in the lobby can be accessed by either selecting a game (see above) and clicking on the horsey in the lefthand menu bar or more directly by double-clicking any game in the lobby. There's a lot of information on this screen, so let's break it down a bit.

The move list on the left is interactive - if you hover over a move it will display the voting for that turn which is very useful in determining who the mole might be. If you click on a move in the move list you will be permanently viewing the game at that moment in time - to resume watching the current game click the camera icon at the end of the list.

When it is your turn, move pieces on the board to "vote" for a move. Depending on the game's settings you may also see temporary arrows pop up from time to time on the board - those indicate a move someone has just voted for.

The Chat Area allows players to communicate and for the server to inform players of various developments. It normally defaults to "Game" for the currently viewed game but can also be set to "Lobby" for server-wide messages.

The bottom-right area shows which players are on which team and sometimes miscellaneous information about them (depending on game settings). The clock on the bottom far right indicates time remaining for the current move and which side is to move.

Settings

The Settings/Options area can be accessed by clicking the cog in the lefthand menu bar or clicking the cog of any game within the Lobby. There are two types of settings - general and game-specific. If you haven't selected a game only the general settings will appear, and only the "creator" of a selected game can change the settings of that game. At some point I'll try and create a comprehensive guide to all the options here. For now, the main ones to note are:

• "AI Fill" allows you to start a game with less than the required six players by filling vacant spots with (currently rather stupid) bots
• "Allow Guests" allows guests to join a game created by a non-guest (off by default to prevent various anonymous absuse)

Future of MoleChess

After having now played many dozens of molechess games with a variety of players I've found that in general the games are quite fun and unpredictable. The one thing that is sometimes a bit anti-climatic is when a team fails to vote out the mole who, now invincible (I call it a "rampaging" mole), begins to openly vote for the worst moves they can think of. By design, this situation rapidly deteriorates for the afflicted team but I have thought of a few ways to create some interest in these currently practically hopeless situations. One is by allowing the other players on the team and/or the mole on the opposing team to try and predict the mole's next vote which, if correct, could oust the mole or limit its powers in some way. Another fun idea is the "Inspector" role which would enable a player to gain clues about which moves the mole had previously voted for at the cost of voting for a random move that turn. If anyone has ideas for other roles, I'd love to hear them in the comments below.

Cheers,

- Zug