CHECKMATE! – Chess Duels

Checkmate puts a full game of chess into Minecraft, then puts your life on the board. Place a chessboard to play anyone on the server, or wait until something tries to kill you: the moment a mob lands what would have been the killing blow, time stops, and it offers you a game instead.
Win, and the mob shatters. Lose, and the blow lands. Every mob plays at its own strength, on its own board.

Duels for your life

• Any mob that would kill you starts a duel instead: a zombie’s hit, a skeleton’s arrow, a creeper’s blast, a warden’s roar. You keep the sliver of health you had and get the board.
• Everything around you freezes: mobs, arrows, fireballs, falling blocks, the lot. Other players are not part of the bargain and keep moving.
• Checkmate the mob and it shatters into pieces where it stood.
• Get mated, and the blow that started it all finally lands.
• A draw (stalemate, repetition, fifty moves, bare kings) means time simply resumes. Nobody falls.
• No way out: the screen cannot be closed, and logging out just pauses the game until you return. There is a resign button if you would rather have it over with.

Every mob plays
Each mob has a chess rating, and the stronger the mob, the better it plays. Weak mobs blunder pieces and take long pauses; the strongest think fast and see deep.
A two-column Elo table: Silverfish 300, Zombie 350, Drowned 500, Creeper 600, Skeleton 800, Phantom 850, Pillager 950, Witch 1000, Blaze 1000, Breeze 1100, Enderman 1150, Vindicator 1200, Evoker 1300, Piglin Brute 1350, Ravager 1450, Elder Guardian 1500, Iron Golem 1550, Wither 1850, Warden 1900, Ender Dragon 1900.
Every vanilla mob that can hurt you is rated. Mobs from other mods are rated by their health and damage, so a modded boss plays like one.

A board for every mob
Over fifty mobs bring their own board: squares tinted to the mob, a frame cut from a matching block, and armies in its colours. The zombie plays rotten green on mud brick, the warden sculk cyan on polished deepslate, the ender dragon on a frame of dragon egg, the wither on crying obsidian, the blaze on nether brick.

Play with friends

• Craft a chessboard from dark oak and birch planks.
• Place it and right-click to open the board. Sit down as white or black; anyone else who opens it watches the game live.
• Resign, offer and accept draws, start a new game, or stand up and let someone else take the seat.
• The pieces stand on the block in the world, so a game in progress is visible to anyone walking past.

The engine

• Built in. The chess engine is part of the mod: nothing to download, no external programs, works offline and on servers.
• Full rules. Castling, en passant, promotion with a piece picker, check, checkmate, stalemate, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, insufficient material.
• A real board. 3D pieces on a board in perspective, animated moves, last move and check highlights, legal move hints, a move list in algebraic notation and the captured pieces.

Credits
Design, code, models, textures and art by me (sphooks).