Great point actually. Will add that, thanks figers! echo chess is already a progressive web app fyi, you can install it directly from the website if you want. but yes, a native iOS app would be great as well.
66 karma · joined August 30, 2023
*SPOILER ALERT*
A good approach for clearing long columns of pawns in echo chess is usually to try to take the very first bottom pawn and to 'climb' up the column by successively taking one pawn at a time. If you can find a way to start from a pawn that's located as low as possible on a given column's side, it'll likely help in clearing a whole swatch of the board without leaving any extra pawns 'orphaned' on their own. Let me know if that makes sense and if you'd like me to provide anohter hint!
Here's a hint: can you try to keep both your white pieces useful after going down from the top section?
see if there's 2 bishops on a white square for example.
any ideas how to improve that in terms of text or visuals for further clarity?
If you think about the chess board in abstracted terms, you can actually map an echo chess puzzle to a graph theory problem. First, you disregard any empty squares, and you consider each piece-square as a node, with its neighboring nodes being any node that can be reached from this node using any number of >0 valid moves without reaching any interim node on the way.
Using that process, you can now convert an entire echo chess board into a graph where each chess piece is a single node. Now you can ask the question, "what is the objective of solving an echo chess puzzle in terms of this graph?"
It turns out that since the goal is to clear all pieces of the board, and in order to clear pieces we have to reach their corresponding square, then in graph terms our goal is to visit every node. However we can only visit every node once at most (because once a piece is captured, it is taken off the board).
In other words, an echo chess puzzle is the same as "visiting every node on the graph exactly once". That's the HPP which is NP-complete, and if you're looking for the shortest HPP, it's even NP-hard.
TL;DR: brute-forcing as a player is not the optimal strategy.
ECHO CHESS Mar 26 (C)
♟
0:21 sec 2/8 tries 12 moves
and yes, some of the daily epic puzzles can be brutal :)
I think it might help to start with a certain strategy in mind. were you able to hone in on a strategy for that one yet? lmk if I can help
Looks super innocent but has already stumped a GM. Happy to give hints if you'd like. gl :)
Granted, the time complexity of doing so is really high. But from an emotional standpoint, beta testers seemed to appreciate more often than not the adrenaline rush that comes with a low number of remaining lives and the renewed focus that comes with it. One playtester mentioned that they only felt they got to the 'flow' state and finally resolved an exceptionally hard level when they were calculating every move on their last life.
Still trying to hone in on the ideal number of lives for each mode. Some puzzles definitely would need more lives than others. For example: https://echochess.com/game.html?game_mode=DAILY&level_type=E...
Spent the past year iterating on it and honing it into a daily format. So many more improvements to come. Lmk if you have any questions or suggestions. Would love to hear your thoughts.
-How to play: You play White (it's always your turn). You become any piece you capture, and your goal is to clear the board in the fewest number of moves. You can capture your own pieces too. No castling, promotions, or en passant.
-What's Zen Mode: a procedurally generated infinite mode that uses an ML model I built. Happy to answer any questions on that.
0:18 sec 1/8 tries 13 moves