Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

You can play this interesting game on <a href=http://BrainKing.com>http://BrainKing.com</a> :-)

I like the game, but I question whether it belongs on this website. To me, a chess variant must meet the following criteria : 

1. Played on a board with multiple cells.

2. Diversity of pieces. In other words, pieces of different types that move and/or capture differently. That is why go and draughts/chequers don't qualify, and I don't think Amazons does, either. 

3. Royalty — there must be a piece (or pieces) whose survival is indispensable. Again, go, chequers, and Amazons don't qualify. Arimaa perhaps does — just : if you lose all eight rabbits, you lose the game. But to have eight royal pieces seems a stretch, so that's why I've said "perhaps". 

I'm aware that this website has a "crossovers" section, which allows for games that have borrowed ideas from chess. Cheskers is a good example. It fails the royalty provision, but meets the diversity provision and therefore qualifies as a crossover. But Amazons fails on both counts, in my opinion. 

While we do fairly frequently bring up the question of what exactly qualifies something as a "chess variant," we acknowledge that there are different definitions.  For this reason I think we try to be inclusive rather than exclusive in allowed items.  (At least, that is my justification, and I suspect that may have been the case historically as well.  Also, it is helpful that this is a website and not a book: if I were writing another Encyclopedia of CV's, I would be more inclined to be exclusive for space considerations.)

Specifically here, we have a game played with a chess board and chess pieces (well, pieces with chess movement plus arrow-firing), but the goal and some mechanics have been completely changed.  (Somewhere, I can't find it now, this group of games is described.  Joust is another example, and maybe even puzzles like the 8 Queens and similar things qualify.)

I've generally thought of Crossovers differently: they are specifically a blending of Chess with some other established game.  E.g., I wouldn't consider this game or Joust crossovers.  Cheskers is a crossover with checkers, and For the Crown is a crossover with deck-building games.

Cheskers actually does seem to meet the royalty condition, though in a different way than standard chess (starting with more than one, and allowing the addition of new ones).

David, 

As Ben said, the CVP tends to be inclusive  as far as what is considered a chess variant.  There have been several discussions over the years, and it is always too hard to draw a precise line.  Ultima was questioned because it didn't have replacement capture. There was a discussion around Nemoroth because the victory ondition was stalemate and the piece interactions were unique.  All in all, any game inspired by chess that might interest a variantist would be included.