5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel
is a 2020 chess-based video game. This game is exactly what the title says: chess, but you can multiversally time travel. Easier to understand in practice than in play, the game involves spatial, temporal, and parallel dimensions:
- Spatial Dimensions; the standard two axes from Chess proper.
- Temporal Dimensions, or "Timelines"; a timeline advances when a new move is played on the board. Pieces have identical movement along this axis as they would the two standard axes.
- Parallel dimensions, or "Branching Timelines"; Moving a unit into the past creates a new timeline branch, which runs in parallel with any existing timelines.
Notably, the interpretation of the rules of regular chess applies to all of the pieces accurately. A Knight, for example, can move two squares in one dimension, and one square in an adjacent dimension; this can mean that they move two squares to the right, and one square back in time. Or, more confusingly, they can move two squares in one direction, then one square to a parallel timeline.
This game contains the following tropes:
- Alternate Timeline: Time traveling creates alternate timelines.
- Balance Buff:
- The existence of time and universes as dimensions of travel makes the rook far more inherently powerful than in traditional chess. The rook's ability to travel limitlessly in a single dimension also applies to temporal and parallel travel, meaning it can go back as many turns as desired or cross as many timelines as desired while maintaining its spacial positioning. This allows the rook to potentially capture any piece in the past or an alternate timeline provided it actually maneuvers to the target's space in its current time. There's a valid tactic in 5D Chess called "Jurassic Rook" where you send a rook so far back in time that it essentially resets the game but you now have one new piece in the form of that rook.
- The Queen, rather than just having the movement patterns of the rook and bishop, also has the movement patterns of the Unicorn and Dragon, effectively making it the Terminator in the game. Depending on your point of view, it doesn't help that any Pawn that makes it to the other side of the board is automatically promoted to one.
- Boring, but Practical: At the start of the game, both players can often spend a long time just playing regular chess. If both players are hesitant to branch the timeline, the game can go on as a regular chess match for a while, or may even end without a timeline split at all.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- Players who are accustomed to piece movement in traditional chess can get quite confused with piece movement in 5D Chess, as the addition of time travel and parallel timelines creates the ability to move pieces in ways that would not be possible in traditional chess. For example, while a bishop can only move diagonally in traditional chess, in 5D Chess bishops are able to travel diagonally through time, allowing them to move across timelines or into the past and travel one square in a cardinal direction for every turn/timeline crossed through.
- The ability to capture, check, checkmate across time and universes effectively renders most traditional chess strategy moot, making adapting on the fly the best way to play 5D Chess.
- Difficult, but Awesome: One of the core features of the game, being able to create branching timelines, requires quite a bit of skill to fully utilise. Making a new timeline can be pointless, as only n+1 timelines are active at any one time. Furthermore, making a new timeline adds an entirely new board that your opponent can use to check you. When used properly, however, making a new timeline can guarantee you a victory, and can actually make it easier to put a King in check, since your opponent can't change the past.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The title is simply a description of the game. An inaccurate one, it may be argued, as only two spatial and two temporal dimensions are apparent (though the Steam page describes an "aesthetic" third spatial dimension).
- Mind Screw: What the game is commonly said to be able to achieve as it encourages players to weaponize the Timey-Wimey Ball. Especially if the players are a bit too trigger happy with time travel, causing games to escalate far out of the players' control to the point where it's entirely possible to get a checkmate by accident.
- Non-Indicative Title: The title claims the presence of five dimensions; however, up/down, sideways, through time, and across universes appear to be the only four. According to the game's Steam page, there is a third spatial dimension, though this does not affect gameplay.
- Obvious Rule Patch:
- For balance reasons, making multiple timelines consecutively without allowing your opponent to create new timelines renders all timelines past the first "inactive", denoted by a timeline arrow in your color. "Inactive" timelines don't need to be played to move The Present regardless of the actual position of The Present, and if your opponent chooses to stall out those timelines it can render them at best useless and at worst a possible liability as it's another potential timeline where the opponent can checkmate. Making too many will force the game to stop you from making new timelines altogether until your opponent time travels, and if your opponent makes a timeline it will "reactive" your oldest inactive timeline.
- As it is possible to create a timeline where a king piece no longer exists due to time travel or crossing timelines, it is possible to win a game by reducing the number of boards your opponent can make valid moves in below the number of active timelines. While this is most traditionally (and easily) accomplished with a checkmate, this can also be accomplished by depriving your opponent's ability to play in a given timeline regardless of whether or not there is a king to checkmate in said timeline.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The dragon piece, available in some board setups, can only travel quadragonally across the horizontal, vertical, time, and multiverse axes simultaneously.
- Our Unicorns Are Different: Another fairy chess piece, the unicorn, can move in any three of the four directions.
- Temporal Paradox: Actively averted via the rules of time travel, wherein traveling back into the past to change it leaves the original timeline where the piece that time traveled ceases to exist unaltered and creates a parallel timeline with the addition of the new piece.
- Variant Chess:
- The game itself is a chess variant.
- The game also includes several board setups that are variants in and of themselves.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: As in standard chess, the game ends when the king is in checkmate, but it gets a little ridiculous when checkmating any king at any point in time in any reality causes the game to end regardless of what happens in any other timeline.
- You Can't Fight Fate:
- The past cannot be changed. Moving a unit into the past creates a new branching timeline. It is easier to put a King in check if it is in the past, because your opponent can't move pieces already in the past, they can only send a new unit in, or kill the unit that is threatening it from the future.
- Played with with the rules of The Present; if The Present is moved backwards via the creation of a parallel timeline, any turns to the right of The Present are considered to be in the future; any board states in the future aren't considered valid for checks or checkmates until The Present catches up to them but can still be played. A desperate player can attempt to abuse time travel to send pieces back in time to delay The Present long enough for them to work their way out of a checkmate in the future.
