Android chess puzzle

CoreSquares

Place pieces. Light the board.

Every chess piece lights up the squares it controls. Drop pieces until every target glows, across eleven themed worlds. No chess knowledge needed.

Get early access Android only for now

Playable gameplay demo

School 5th Grade
Queen

Drag the queen onto the board to light all 5 stars

The real School, 5th Grade level
A bishop lights its square in the pitch-dark Night world, revealed by the flashlight

How a level works

Drag a piece, light its squares.

Drag a piece onto the board and a live preview shows exactly which squares it will light before you let go. Each piece lights the squares it attacks in chess, plus the one it sits on. Place pieces until every target square glows, and the level is solved.

In the campaign there are no lives and no penalty for a wrong drop. You read the board, try a placement, and adjust. The early levels in School teach you every piece by feel, so you do not need to know chess to start.

Eleven worlds

Each world bends one rule.

School eases you in and teaches every piece. After that, each world changes a rule of its own: Ice freezes a target until two pieces cover it, Lava drops obstacles that block your beams, Night hides the board until you sweep it with a flashlight. Every world has its own art and music.

01 School world

School Grades K-12

School is where you learn the game. Each grade introduces a new chess piece, starting with the rook in Kindergarten and ending with the pawn in 10th grade.

14 levels · Tutorial progression
02 Lava world

Lava Feel the heat

Lava introduces obstacles. Blocked cells are squares where you cannot place a piece, and they stop sliding beams (rook, bishop, queen) from passing through.

20 levels · Blocked cells
03 Ice world

Ice Crack it twice

In Ice, some targets are frozen solid. A single piece covering a frozen target is not enough.

25 levels · Multi-hit targets
04 Forest world

Forest Nature finds a way

Forest uses void cells to carve the board into irregular shapes: L-shapes, T-shapes, crosses, and organic forms. Void cells are not part of the board.

25 levels · Non-rectangular boards
05 Storm world

Storm Mind the guards

Storm puts enemy pieces on the board. These enemies sit in fixed positions and do two things: their occupied square blocks your beams (like a blocker), and their attack squares become red no-go zones where you cannot place your pieces.

25 levels · Enemies
06 Cosmos world

Cosmos Infinite possibilities

Cosmos adds portal pairs to the board. When a beam enters one portal, it exits the paired portal traveling in the same direction.

25 levels · Portal pairs
07 Tech world

Tech Maximum overdrive

Tech has no unique world mechanic. Instead, it cranks up the difficulty of pure self-lighting puzzles.

25 levels · Peak difficulty (pure puzzles)
08 Aqua world

Aqua Dive in

Aqua uses all six piece types in balanced combinations that show how different pieces complement each other. No single mechanic twist, just boards that reward understanding every piece.

25 levels · Balanced compositions
09 Beach world

Beach Catch some sun

Beach makes diagonal beams bounce off board edges. When a bishop or queen's diagonal ray hits the edge of the board, it reflects once (like a billiard ball) and keeps going.

24 levels · Beam reflection
10 Burger world

Burger Order up

Burger scales everything up. Boards grow to 12x12, piece counts reach eight, and you use the full chess set including pawns.

25 levels · Maximalist endgame
11 Night world

Night Light it in the dark

Night hides everything. The board renders pitch black with no visible checkerboard or targets.

25 levels · Flashlight reveal

Screenshots

From the game

Choosing a world in CoreSquares
Choosing a world
A beam passing through a portal pair on a Cosmos board
Portals in Cosmos
Lighting a Storm board around the enemies
Enemies in Storm
Solving a level on a non-rectangular Forest board
A Forest board
Choosing a level on the Lava world path
The Lava level path
Solving an Aqua water board
Solving in Aqua

What's inside

Free to play

01

258 levels

Eleven worlds, each bending one rule, with a difficulty curve that climbs from a single rook to twelve-by-twelve boards.

02

A daily puzzle

One board for the whole world, new each day. Monday is gentle, Sunday is hard. Solve it for a streak.

03

Clocks

Race a 3 or 5 minute clock, or play Survival with no timer and three strikes. Each mode keeps your best.

04

45 badges

Bronze, silver, and gold, for speed, clean solves, long streaks, and a few earned the hard way.

05

No forced ads

Optional rewarded videos only, for a free hint if you want one. Nothing ever interrupts a puzzle.

06

No sign-up to play

Open the app and start solving. No account needed to jump in.

About

Every piece lights the squares it controls. Your job is to light the whole board.

I made CoreSquares because I wanted a chess puzzle I could play to wind down. You place pieces so every target lights up, using nothing but real chess moves. Drop a piece, watch its squares glow, and read the board.

It is a spatial puzzle, not a chess match, so you do not need to know chess. The pieces move the way they do on a real board, but you are really just reading space: find where a piece's lines fall, and feel the click when everything lights at once. The early levels teach you each piece by feel; if you already play, you will read the patterns fast and then have to work for the later boards. The campaign has no lives and no energy meter, so you can sit with a board as long as you like, and when you do want a clock, Clocks mode is there for it.

Made by Corey Zapin

Early access

Play CoreSquares early

The game is in early testing on Android. Drop your Gmail to join the early-access list, and I'll get you in as spots open up.