Point Draft Chess

Cinevva's analyzer read this game's design doc and its source, then wrote the brief below. "Make your own" hands it to the game creator as your opening message, so you start from a real spec rather than a one-line idea.

Rebuild a playable single-player game titled “Point Draft Chess,” a chaotic chess variant in which the player drafts a custom White army with a 43-point budget, then plays White against an AI-controlled Black army randomly generated from its own 43-point budget. Use a dark navy/near-black application background and a clean responsive interface: a left setup/HUD sidebar on desktop and a full-width stacked layout on narrow screens, with a large board area on the right. In fullscreen, hide the sidebar and show compact controls over the board.

Present the board as an 8x8 chessboard in simple 3D using an orthographic, top-down camera. The board is made of slightly raised square tiles with alternating warm off-white/light beige squares and slate-blue/dark gray squares, surrounded by the dark background. Use clean low-detail 3D token-like pieces, with circular or compact sculpted forms and visible letter/icon labels; white and black pieces are differentiated by light versus dark materials and labels. The reference view should feel minimal, centered, and uncluttered rather than like a realistic chess set. Highlight the selected piece and legal destinations with bright ring markers on top of squares. Animate moves with short smooth tweens where possible.

The game begins in Setup. White’s king is free and automatically placed on e1; Black’s king is free and automatically placed on e8. The player clicks a palette button such as Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen, or the enabled special pieces, then clicks an empty square on White’s home two ranks (ranks 1–2) to place it. The player may place any number of pieces without exceeding 43 points. Giants occupy a 2x2 block and are placed by clicking their top-left square. Click Done to finish drafting; Black is then generated automatically within its 43-point budget and play begins. The player can move the White king during setup to another allowed home square, but cannot remove it. Right-click a placed non-king piece, or use Erase, to remove it and refund its cost. Display setup state clearly with pills for “Phase: Setup,” “Turn: White,” and remaining points, plus Done and Reset Setup buttons.

The default chess movement should be recognizable and simplified: normal pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king movement; no castling and no en passant; a pawn reaching the last rank automatically becomes a queen; a move may not leave that side’s king in check; win by checkmate and declare stalemate/draw when there are no legal moves without check. During play, click a piece to select it, then click a highlighted legal destination to move or capture. Show status messages such as check, checkmate, stalemate, whose turn it is, and errors/status feedback in the HUD. After White moves, let the AI respond according to a selectable difficulty: Easy chooses random legal moves, Normal favors captures and checks, Hard uses deeper 2–3 ply search with king-safety logic, and Expert searches deeper/more often with larger reply sampling caps.

Include these draftable special pieces and implement their listed behavior:
- Bomber, cost 4: moves one square orthogonally; when captured it explodes in a 3x3 area and destroys all pieces there, including allies. If it reaches the last rank, promote it to Kamikaze.
- Giant, cost 3: occupies a 2x2 footprint, moves one square orthogonally, and when moving into a 2x2 area can capture up to four pieces.
- Cannibal, cost 6: moves one square in any direction and may eat an adjacent non-king piece without moving, including its own piece; after three lunches it upgrades and gains knight jumps.
- Medic, cost 4: moves one square orthogonally and at the start of its side’s turn grants a one-hit shield to adjacent orthogonal friendly pieces.
- Ninja, cost 6: moves one square orthogonally; after a capture, if not on cooldown, it may immediately make one extra move up to two squares orthogonally, then has a two-turn cooldown.
- Parasite, cost 6: moves one square orthogonally and may infect an adjacent enemy instead of capturing, changing that piece to the parasite’s color and linking it; if the infected piece dies, the parasite dies too.
- Peacekeeper, cost 5: moves one square orthogonally, cannot attack or capture, and prevents adjacent enemy pieces from attacking/capturing.
- Witch, cost 5 and limited to one per side: moves one orthogonal square; every three of its side’s turns it becomes ready to spawn a Rat on an adjacent empty square.
- Rat, cost 1 and spawn-only: automatically moves one square forward after its side finishes a turn, captures straight ahead, and is blocked by friendly/neutral pieces.
- Assassin, cost 7: moves one square in any direction; on capture it also destroys enemy pieces in a three-square forward cone (forward-left, forward, forward-right).
- Prankster, cost 6: copies the last enemy-moved piece’s movement pattern, or moves like a king if there is no prior enemy move.
- Taser, cost 4: moves one orthogonal square only to an empty square and can stun the enemy piece directly in front for two turns.
- Hunter, cost 6: moves one square in any direction, locks onto an enemy entering its 3x3 radius, and automatically takes one step toward the target when the target leaves that radius.
- Shapeshifter, cost 6: starts moving like a king and morphs into a random non-king/non-giant piece after each capture.
- Guard, cost 5: moves one orthogonal square and creates unstoppable wall-squares immediately to its left and right; pieces cannot move into or capture on those squares until the Guard dies.
- Imitater, cost 4: moves like a king, is not a real king, and must be placed on the back rank.
- Chainer, cost 6: moves like a king and freezes all other pieces of both sides within its 3x3 radius.
- Jester, cost 9: moves one square in any direction; the first time it is captured it kills the capturing piece and survives, while the second capture kills it normally.
- Kamikaze, cost 6: moves one square in any direction including diagonals; it does not explode when capturing, but explodes in a 3x3 area when captured and destroys only enemy pieces.

Organize special pieces into optional packs controlled by setup UI. The visible interface should have pack/settings controls and palette filtering for Chaos, Peaceful, Trickery, and Sneaky pieces. Chaos contains Bomber, Giant, Cannibal, Jester, and Kamikaze; Peaceful contains Medic, Ninja, Parasite, and Peacekeeper; Trickery contains Witch, Assassin, Prankster, Taser, and Hunter; Sneaky contains Shapeshifter, Guard, Imitater, and Chainer. The implementation also exposes optional Mutant and Variant packs in the actual interface, with additional palette entries such as Mutant, Checker, Smasher, Scientist, Slime, Archbishop, Knighted Pawn, and Giraffe; preserve these as optional extra content if rebuilding the full interface rather than omitting them. A Packs modal can enable/disable packs, and banned pieces can be selected in a Ban Modes modal for both sides.

Add optional Neutral Pieces. When enabled, place a Bear at d4 and Traders at a4 and h5. The Bear moves randomly after each turn and can be captured by either side. Moving onto a Trader sells the moving piece for 100% of its cost and grants one Shop credit; a Shop button then allows placing a new piece on home ranks by spending points. Show the shop credit count in the Shop button.

Add optional Super Pieces. When enabled, let the player choose one power from a dropdown: Pawn Promoter (every 6 turns, choose a pawn to instantly promote to Queen), Blaster (every 2 turns, automatically destroy all pieces in the surrounding 8 squares, including kings), Transmuter (every 9 turns, choose a non-king/non-queen piece and transform it into a random non-king/non-queen piece), Wizard Swap (every 5 turns, the Super becomes a non-moving Wizard and swaps places with a chosen piece, excluding King/Giant/Super), Shield Totem (every 3 turns, give a chosen non-King/Giant/Super piece a one-hit shield), Gravity Well (every 5 turns, tap a square and make surrounding pieces attempt to slide one step toward it only into empty squares, with collisions canceled), or Curse Dealer (every 4 turns, tap an enemy piece so that on its next turn it can move only one square, with knights unaffected). If enabled, spawn a Super token marked with a star for both sides at White e3 and Black e6; it moves one square in any direction. Provide clear ON/OFF controls and disable the type selector when Super Pieces are off.

Make progression persistent in browser storage. Kamikaze is initially locked and becomes available in the shop after the player wins one game; show it as locked until then and unlock the achievement “If I die, you die!” when unlocked/owned. Jester is initially locked until the achievement “The joke is on you” is earned by killing an enemy Jester. Provide an Achievements modal showing unlocked and locked achievements, including those two named achievements. Provide a Piece Almanac modal that explains the available pieces. Include an Upcoming modal with the planned “Room Multiplayer” feature, and preserve the actual interface’s Options modal with Settings, Ban Modes, Piece Creator, Save Offline File, Load Offline File, and Upcoming. The Piece Creator should allow making one saved custom piece by choosing name, emoji, cost, movement directions, attack directions, long-range shots, knight jumps, chain-after-kill, chainer aura, promotion, and Jester-style first-death revenge.

Support the actual interface extras visible in the implementation: optional chess clocks/timer controls, fullscreen board-focused controls, responsive 16:9 and 4:3 display presets, controller/gamepad hints and focus states where available, and local hotseat Rooms with create/join code UI and copyable game state. Keep the overall visual language restrained: slate/cream chessboard, dark translucent navy panels, rounded pills and buttons, cyan selection/highlight accents, and compact system-font HUD. The central experience must remain the draft-before-chess loop: spend points creatively, survive the unusual pieces and chain reactions, then checkmate the AI.”