5D Chess: a lovely idea, badly explained

Let me explain (what I understand of) 5D Chess, and why I think they could have taught it to you better. And also why it's not 5D.

[@TheClingClang]

14:32 So I think I get what's going on here. The game defines each pieces movement not as being able to move diagonally or vertically/horizontally, but rather with respect to how it changes dimensions. A rook can move only in one dimension at a time, but may move along that dimensions as far as it would like. This is why if it changes timeline it appears in the same spot spatially: it's only changing its "time" dimensions. Bishops seem to be defined as moving in any two dimensions at once, but on a 1-to-1 ratio. Want to move back in time 2 boards? Then you also need to move two spatially, or jump two timelines. The King by contrast is defined as being able to move along any number of axis, but only ever shifting position along each by one. So you can move vertically by one, horizontally by one, back in time by one, jump a timeline by one, or any combination of the above. The Knight is an interesting one, because it seems to be defined as moving two spaces along any one dimension, and then on along another. That's why in the first match it was able to jump 2 spaces forward: it had gone two down and then one back through time, forming the traditional "L" shape along the "time/Y-axis" plane. Interesting little game.

[@michaelbauers8800]

The queen is the weird piece. You might think the queen either moves like a rook, in one dimension. Or like a bishop, in two dimensions. But the queen can move in 1, 2, 3 or 4 dimensions at a time. Making the queen stupidly powerful

[@goodgoshzilla]

I think it helps to visualise the movements in a cube board rather than parallel flat boards - a knight moving two spaces right and one space vertically is an easy way to understand how the l-shape movement is preserved, for example

[@copycat2696]

Or in a hypercube if you want to account for all dimensions. This shape that is famously very easy for a human brain to wrap around

[@not-on-pizza]

34:20 There is a very subtle stretched chessboard pattern in the background, that shows pairs of boards as being in the same "timeline space" for backtime movement purposes. This game melts my brain just looking at it, and _that_ was just on the 5x5 Rooks only game...

[@lexta13]

14:53 It really depends on how you interpret the original movement rules for the king. If you say “the king can move one space I up to two different dimensions”, moving back in time would use up one of those dimensions. But they instead consider the rule to be “the king can move up to one space in every dimension”, which means that going back in time does not consume your spacial movement. In normal chess, the two rules are equivalent, so it’s a matter of taste which one you’d consider the “correct” generalization.

[@memoryleaked]

If you could view all the boards as a block, you could see the 3x3x3 cube of space that the king could move, and it would be clear that king is still only moving 1 square "in any direction"

[@Fachewachewa]

I love this game (and I'm terrible at chess). Trying to answer things I haven't seen answered already. I'd say the puzzle section is kind of the tutorial. They basically teach you how each piece moves in controlled scenarios, in situations that are increasingly tricky. Also as someone else said, the different views definitely help with visualising movement 13:30 - you only have to move in N+1 of your opponent's timelines, where N is your number of timelines. At that point if they make a new timeline they will have to move in yours. Creating a timeline is a resource. Around 6:00 - I think you should probably never play in the future (or in the past), even if you can, since you basically give up a board position for nothing. And you need a board in your turn to move between timelines, so having one available is always advantageous, especially if moving there doesn't create a new timeline. 24:40 - Rooks are the best way to stall. Idk if that's still a thing, but at release, using a rook on a square that wasn't occupied for the whole game and sending it back to the start was called Jurassic Rook (which I think was coined during a Tyler Glaiel stream). The potential infinite stalling is why there's a N+1 rule for timelines. This is also why at the end you can move after the checkmate but it does nothing, since that would be your 3rd timeline and the AI only had one, it doesn't become the present, and they don't have to play in the past. After a while you tend to know the easy checkmates like the one with the bishop at the end, and playing against AI it was always possible to win in a few turns because of that. Makes it be a lot about opening which is what I don't really like in chess, but if you get further it gets wild and I love it.

[@SixSidedVice]

34:00 - I agree it's really not clear, but the lightly coloured checkerboard background does indicate turn groupings. It's surprising how much the rectangular pattern does *not* read as the "time and parallel dimensions" board space on first glance though :)

[@waffling0]

When I first played this game it took me far too long to realize that the background wasn't just a nice pattern but it was indicating the squares of the extra dimensions. They even have little labels T1, T2 etc to reinforce that, but it took me a while to notice. I've also never figured out what the 5th dimension of "5d chess" is, it seems to me that there are only 4 dimensions total

[@naleadentrinhinaa]

@@waffling0The 5th dimension is the unused 3rd spatial dimension

[@redstonemaster10]

29:27 The reason the king can only move to those two timelines is that the king can only move one step in each dimension. Moving to the original timeline constitutes two steps in that dimension.

[@KrystianMajewski]

Ok but the black king did that. Moved diagonally on the board but also back in time AND to a different dimension at 24:23 Edit: A nevermind. I see it now. The original timeline is two spaces away and the king can only move one. Ok.

[@eclipserepeater2466]

So the king has unlimited dimensions to move in but still only one "range". Makes sense. o.O

[@memoryleaked]

7:00 "I've already moved on that timeline." Almost correct. You've already placed a move to be done there, but that move isn't committed until the present catches up to that move. ~~If you already know what you will want to do, you can place moves early, but you are still free to change your mind on the pre-move.~~ (see 21:09, where a pre-move gets commited) "Can you move to the future?" I think you can if a branch is made pushing the present back, and a valid move from the new branch can land on a future board. "I don't understand why I can't move to certain tiles there" You can only land onto a square where it is your turn, so 1 board of your turn back in time, the queen can move much like a king on it's own time would move, 1 square outward. After two squares back in time, she lands two squares away from her starting square. 14:27 When the rook is considering it's back in time path, to move away from it's current square would be a diagonal movement. The kind and queen are able to move diagonaly. 21:09 I'm wrong about undo-ing pre-moves, as we can see at this point the previously yellow border is now a player color. It might be wise to never move where you don't have to yet, unless that means check. 28:54 "Why can I move to this timeline but not that one." The king can only move one square in any direction. To move out two timelines would be two squares of movement. 40:51 "Why can't I move here?" In the two boards away, the bishop one board away is in the way. You can capture on the next board over, but the third one over is protected by the second. I love how accurate this YT title is.

[@AdrianWoodUK]

8:17 - "I don't understand my move options here." In standard chess, a rook can move in a straight line as far as they like in one directions. You can think of a queen as doing the same, except they can move in any combination of those directions... it's just that, on a 2D board, there's only one combination (horizontal + vertical = diagonal). They have to move the same distance in whatever direction/s they go, so they can go up 3, or right 3, or up 3 & right 3, but they can't up up 3 and right 2. The same is happening here, just adding in the dimension of time (or, umm, of "dimensions" I guess, but let's not worry about that, it's the same thing just different). They can move only in time (going back to the same space at an earlier point), or move back in time in addition to moving spacially. The rule that you have to move the same distance in whatever dimensions you move in still applies, so the queen can move up, right & back 1 space (landing one space away on the previous board state), or up, right & back 2 spaces (landing two spaces away two board states back), but they can't move up & right 2 spaces and back only 1. That results in what you see here, with the spaces the Queen can land on expanding outwards the further into the past you go. I do understand the confusion though. It is as natural to think "the rook can move in one dimension, the queen can move in two dimensions" as it is to think "the rook can move in one dimension, the queen can move in all dimensions", and so it's easy to assume the Queen would be locked to moving only orthogonally when travelling backwards. The game does have a bit of an inhereted problem here though; standard 2D chess doesn't really have a distinction between "2 dimensions" and "all dimensions", so it's valid to translate the movement interpreting it either way, and it's a coin-toss which will "feel" right to any given player (assuming they don't have an external guide or tutorial, of course).

[@Mac_Omegaly]

I bought this on the winter sale. I had a legal move, but couldn't find it to move put of check. So I would love a mode where if you are in check there would be a button to show all your legal moves. I could win on seemingly luck. And while you can just keep moving peices back in time and create new parralle timelines, this increases the power of the queen. So there is an interesting balance for tactics, but it quickly becomes too vast to simply calculate and then you win or lose by mistake.

[@1vader]

34:15 If I remember correctly, that's what the green blinking button left of the active board is for. The different viewmodes are a bit confusing but they generally show the dimensions along which pieces move better. And if you have 2 more timelines than your opponent, the newest one becomes inactive and doesn't impact the present (until your opponent creates another timeline). This is to avoid infinite (or at least very long) stalling where you just always move pieces back in time and create earlier timelines which never gives your opponent the move on the board where they can checkmate.

[@Jindo1]

When I picked this game up, I found that the puzzle mode was the closest thing available to a tutorial, still not ideal but at least it made you look at isolated concepts in the form of mate in 1 (or 2 or 3 etc) style scenarios with limited pieces.

[@CaesarsSalad]

29:45 I think the game cares about the order of the simultaneous boards. The king can move to the simultaneous board directly below it, because that counts as distance 1, which is within the king's range. But he can't reach the others because those are further away. This never came up with rooks, because they have infinite range.

[@Yessoan]

34:21 They did show the time units, using the background. It also shows how far away each board state is in turns and in lines.

[@kingambrose9919]

this is very interesting I'm going to watch this later because one of the things I praised most about the game was how easy it was to understand and how well they teach you the game so I'd love to see another perspective on it

[@hellfiresquid]

There is a nice thing that I didn't notice at first that make it a little easier to understand and that the game should have highlighted better. If you look at the background there are tiles and on the tiles just below or just to the right there are very faint coordinates marked for the time and timeline dimensions. The time dimensions are marked with T1, T2, T3 with T1 being the first turn for both white and black, T2 being the second turn for each player, etc. The main timeline where you start is marked as 0L with timelines going down are marked +1L, +2L, +3L, etc. and the timelines going up are marked -1L, -2L, -3L, etc. (I think L stands for Line) When white makes a new timeline it goes on the next positive line and when black makes a new timeline it goes to the next negative line. I think thinking about it in terms of the coordinates can help with understanding how pieces are moving. Since the rook only moves in one dimension, you can choose to move it in the X, Y, T, or L dimension, and it's position in any other dimension cannot change. The way the queen works is you can move the same distance in any number of dimensions. A move in regular chess would look like +3X -3Y since you can only move in the X and Y dimensions. In 5D chess it can make a move that looks like -4X -4T +4L, since you pick some distance and some (or all) of the dimensions. That's what generates the weird pattern on boards in the past, when you move the queen back -2T, then it could also move 0X, 0Y and stay in place, or for example move +2X +2Y. It looks like it's skipping spaces since a move like -2T +1X +1Y would be illegal since it isn't moving the same distance in every dimension.

[@ifcoltransg2]

I've not played this game before, so I'm just going by how I feel like they would have programmed it, after having watched to the end of the video. 5:09 The queen can't go back in time because all of the directions are blocked. If you look at the two boards in the second column, all of them have the queen completely surrounded by pieces, plus the queen's square itself. 6:17 Not going to take the free knight with the pawn? 8:14 For each direction, the queen has to either go orthogonally or diagonally. She's going two boards back, so every other dimension has to be either 0 squares (which would be moving orthogonally along that dimension) or two squares (which would be moving diagonally along that dimension). The five spots amount to, 2 up + 2 left, 2 up + 0 horizontally, 0 vertically + 2 left, 0 vertically + 0 horizontally (so just moving in the time dimension) and, finally, 0 vertically + 2 right. The missing move from the pattern is 2 up and 2 right, but that move is blocked. In order to get there, the queen has to go through all the intervening squares. So what square is that? Well, all told, the queen would be moving 2 spaces up, 2 spaces right, and 2 spaces back in time. So to get there, she would first have to go 1 square up, 1 square right, and 1 square back in time. But if you look at that square, there's a black pawn there in the way, blocking the move. 27:53 The other option instead of taking the rook would be if they could put a piece between the king and the rook, blocking the checkmate. I don't think they can do that either though. 28:48 That timeline is two timelines away instead of one timeline away, and kings can only ever move one space in any direction. So he can move one space the parallel universe dimension (as well as up to one space in any other dimensions) but can't go down two parallel universes. The timelines are too far apart from each other. 40:40 There's a bishop in the way on the intervening board. You can capture the bishop one board down, but it blocks you getting to the bishop on the board above it.

[@Luckyninja0987]

I think the history view and parallel view buttons will help you visualize some of the weirder movement

[@The_Foreman]

A "Time" Space consists of 2 boards. 1 for when each player makes a decision. Pieces can only move to when their color was making a decision. Moving 1 "Turn" back in time looks like you're moving 2 boards back in time which make it all visually confusing. All pieces follow their original rules, just with the addition of 2 new directions,"[T]ime" and "[L]ines" E.G. Knights can move: 1X2T, 1X2Y, 1X2L, 1T2X, 1T2Y, 1T2L, 1Y2X, 1Y2T, 1Y2L, 1L2X 1L2Y, 1L2T Instead of just : 1X2Y, or 1Y2X.

[@powerupsoup]

Looking at the very subtle grid behind the boards, the game does group two boards together into T1, T2, etc.

[@retroskater111]

at 40:30, the Bishop can't move two squares spacially across the two dimensions because it is blocked by the black bishop one move spacially across one dimension, I think Fantastic video

[@Pentadact]

Aha, yep that makes sense!

[@Atropos148]

Around 5:20 you cant time travel-move the queen or the King because they are still blocked in by pawns...in the past :) it should show something to warn you in the UI, i agree

[@BoatsAndJoes]

About other chesses: I don't enjoy western chess much, but I just started playing Xiangqi (Chinese chess) and I enjoy it a lot. The pieces have cool movement, and I feel like attacking is easier, which is exciting for me. Shogi (Japanese chess) has some really cool stuff and basically no draws, but there are a lot of possible moves to consider.

[@Cappsy]

I vote for a series of videos of 'Tom gets flummoxed explaining...'.

[@LaughingThesaurus]

There's a video explaining this game decently well called The Terminator Gambit, if anyone's still confused.

[@FinetalPies]

Queen moves get spread out as you look to move further back in time because it's a "diagonal" movement. For each step moved back you must take an equal amount of steps in a more traditional direction

[@FinetalPies]

The common way to describe a King's movement is to say "They can move 1 space in any direction" So it's not inconsistent that a King can move through space and time simulatenously, just as it can move horizontally and vertically at the same time

[@readyforlol]

If anyone watching this is confused, here's a short summary. The movement of your pieces in normal chess are represented by X and Y coordinates. A rook can move any distance either on the X or Y axis. A bishop can move any distance as long as the distance of their X movement is equal to their Y movement. Now this game lets you use OTHER axis instead of X and Y, namely time (t) or different boards in the present. Why does the knight move two squares forward when traveling back in time ? Because it moved 2 squares on the Y axis and then 1 square on the t axis. It helps to imagine a bunch of chess boards stacked together like a 3D cubic grid, where each turn adds a layer onto it. t being the vertical axis, you can move like regular pieces would but in 3D inside that grid. Instead of moving squares on the X or Y axis, you're moving boards along the t axis.

[@curionautics7872]

Hey Tom, I remember reading on your blog about chess and chess variants. I made one a while ago and it's on steam, called "Morph King". Would love to hear your thoughts about it if it was one you happened to play. I share your opinion on a lot of what you mentioned in this video, and it was also what drove me to try and make my own variant that was easy to understand but still deep. Specifically, I wanted to capture the feeling of playing chess during the endgame (where the space of possibilities you have to consider is MUCH lower, so you can look "deep" into any move), but throughout the whole game. I wound up making a very arcadey version of chess, where the enemy AI controls an endless stream of pieces that have severely limited movement (ie enemy rooks can only move by 1 tile), and are very predictable (in fact, they move deterministically). Meanwhile, the player controls a singular piece that moves just like regular chess pieces, but whose type changes every time it moves. It could go from being a rook to a knight, then a bishop, and so on. The player gets to see the next 3 upcoming pieces it'll become, sort of like a tetris conveyor belt. This, ideally, makes it so the player doesn't have to consider too many possibilities every turn, and can look decently deep in their planning, but still has a hard-limit on it due to only being shown the next 3 upcoming pieces. The player ideally gets to make a lot of short-ish clever plans, taking advantage of the enemy's predictability.

[@VanBurenPhilips]

I just bought it right after reading your comment. Played two games, I love it! :D Coupla suggestions: - in the tutorial, those steps that require me to make a move, then click Next - could you get these to advance automatically when I make the move? (making the move then still having the same instruction up feels a bit odd) - when the next wave is signalled, the colour-coded squares are cool, but only useful if I already know what the colours mean. Maybe put mouse-over images on those coloured squares, showing the pieces that will appear there, for people who don't yet know or have forgotten the colour coding? I'm going back in for a third game! :)

[@curionautics7872]

@@VanBurenPhilips Thank you so much for trying it out! I agree with your suggestions, the tutorial fix you mention would be very easy to implement. For the second one, I think rather than adding more UI I would include something on the tutorial or the menu that is like a key, showing the colors that correspond to each piece. I don't worry too much about that because while, sure, the player won't know what the colors mean for a while, they'll eventually learn. I see your point that it can make the initial experience way more awkward though. It'd probably be a while before I implement any though, I'm neck-deep in development for another game. I really really appreciate your comment and you trying the game out!

[@CaesarsSalad]

15:05 "diagonal" doesn't come from "two". That would be "duogonal" if it was a word. "dia" means "through". For example, "diameter" wouldn't make sense if you think of it as meaning "two".

[@yubbo3]

You should really use the history and parallel view, it really helps visualize how certain pieces move backwards through time and parallel timelines. If you can get a pretty long game, then set up a bishop for instance to go back in time through the whole game, it's clear how it moves.

[@StickNik]

It was probably worth showing the parallel and history views, found a video after watching this that demonstrates how pieces can move between boards by tracing their movement lines and it was quite helpful to see it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hX2aZKJqbcmVbdU I've also just noticed that there's a background rectangular grid that groups the boards pairs for each turn. It's not very obvious and maybe there's a better way like different board spacing.

[@Carsonist]

I'm still waiting for the tabletop version

[@honeycooler]

the 5th dimension is madness

[@neb2385]

every-time i see this game i get so excited and then remember i hate chess, wish there was a 5d checkers

[@CassidyListon]

🤔 I think this would be a great basis for a sequel to Into The Breach.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

I love the stupidity the explanations generated. Absolute chaos.

[@TheOverArchiver]

Yeah this game is titled incorrectly which is honestly my biggest complaint about it.

[@4videovideo]

The idea is probably that the king can move one space in all available dimensions at once.

[@deaththink]

Gunpoint was such a VERY fun game, would love more of that or something like it.

[@87in7]

this game is insane

[@adamvolkinshtein1184]

I really like this video

[@rich_in_paradise]

They should do a version where each board is like 3d chess from Star Trek. Or not.

[@frankwhite2072]

I believe it's tetragonal. The moves are seperated because of which gamestate a player can attack. If they added space chess to this, then it would be 5d.

[@percyvile]

I think you have a spot on critism, the game is really interesting but there's a lot of badly explained/communicated concepts. Which is particularly bad given the complexity of just making a few moves in this game

[@diestormlie]

My head hurts.

[@edwardnewtonLA]

I literally just opened my phone and saw this posted. Heeere we go.

[@Mepholar]

For 5D chess it skipped moving on the z-axis/ 3rd dimension 30 min in when your king could only jump to 2 other boards I think its because 1) the king can only move through one dimension at a time because limited to 1 square, 2) the king has been in that space the entirety of the time so 4d, 3) the timeline arrows deny access to the other boards if you only have one square of movement/ 1 turn. Additionally I think the timeline arrows are charting all the combination of movements available per board so the divergent timeline arrows aren’t JUST 1 piece traversing 4d or 5d, but also tuing down every other piece reacting thereafter.... and the reaction window broadens the more dimensional movement a piece has. Anyhow... I think thats whats going on but I’m learning this game from your vid. Going to hunt it down though! Looks fun!

[@dudeglove]

my head hurts

[@LeDonPraes]

I recently bought it and I was honestly not happy with this game. Not wanting to say it's bad or anything, I just expected Butterfly Effect and instead I got Terminator.

[@Psytrese]

8:15 I think what's happening here is that the Queen can move in 2 ways, either X=Y or X>0,Y=0. So in the far left it can move to the space it's on spacially but move dimensionally, or it can move two spaces dimensionally and the same number in X&Y. The reason it can't move to E5 is that it would involve being able to move to E5 on the original timeline which it cannot. I think this begs the question why it can move to D4 on the middle timeline when it's occupied on the original but I'm assuming the game considers landing on an occupied square a valid move as long as at the end of the turn only 1 piece remains on it.

[@DS-tv2fi]

Ah, this game. I want to love it, I really do, but it’s just not very user friendly.

[@randomsandwichian]

Looking at the first few moves that was played, the game seems to be suggesting only the places in which you can move on all available boards, but not the ones in which your piece will easily be defeated (eg. one of the queen's move is just shy of the square the opponent's pawn can eat it with). But then, that's just a quick surface observation.

[@DaleNashDN]

It is 5D! the 2 normal dimension of Chess, plus up and down to parallel dimensions (+2), plus back in time (+1). 5!

[@eclipserepeater2466]

Up and down are just different directions on the same dimension though. Otherwise a normal chess board would be already 4D.

[@DarkestMirrored]

god. this game seemed interesting but knowing that the time-travel rules are this obtuse completely turns me off. they should just be able to jump to a different board in the timeline using their normal movement rules!

[@ScarfKat]

That is actually how it works, it's just not very well conveyed without already knowing that beforehand. I agree with Tom that a proper tutorial would really do a lot for this

[@Max-pg4fw]

🙈 'Promo SM'

[@84bombsjetpack23]

There is probably no good way to explain 5 dimensional things to humans, so it would have to be badly explained.