Don't move your pieces.
Flick them.
Carress takes chess — a game of quiet contemplation refined over fifteen centuries — and asks the question nobody asked: what if the knight were a projectile? Pull back, release, and watch your carefully laid plans meet the laws of physics. The laws usually win.
Plays in any browser · installable to your home screen · works offline · no grandmasters were consulted
White to topple in one.
Aim. Flick. Topple.
The rules fit on a napkin. Mastery takes slightly longer, mostly because the board doesn't care about your feelings.
Set up your army
Arrange your pieces anywhere in your half. Feel like a general. Enjoy this part — it's the last moment everything goes according to plan.
Pull back & flick
Drag back like a slingshot, release, and commit. Every shot fires at full force — there is no gentle option, which says a lot about this game.
Topple to capture
Anything knocked off its feet is gone — theirs, ideally. Chain collisions for combos your opponent will insist were luck. They were not luck. (They were a bit luck.)
Fell the king
Chip the enemy king's life bar down to zero and he topples with all the dignity of a traffic cone. That's checkmate. Well — it's something.
No presets. Just instinct.
You build your own army now — the board opens in the standard formation with both knights kicked to the front corners, and the rest is yours to drag into place, one piece per square, on a sixty-second clock. Two instincts fight over the board; the theory behind them lives in the field notes.
Built to pick up and play
Two players or solo
Pass-and-play on one device — the board politely flips for each player — or take on the computer, which has been specifically trained to not fall for that.
Install & play offline
It's a Progressive Web App: add it to your home screen and it works on planes, in basements, and anywhere else you go to avoid rematches.
Pure skill*
No power-ups, no pay-to-win, no ads. Just aim and angles. (*And ricochets. So much of it is ricochets.)
Anywhere, instantly
Phone, tablet, or desktop. No downloads, no sign-up, no tutorial you can't skip. One tap to launch, one flick to regret.
About Carress
Carress is an indie passion project — a mashup of two games separated by a continent and a few centuries: the strategy of chess and the tabletop physics of carrom. Chess brought the pieces and the gravitas. Carrom brought the violence.
The result is fast, tense, and a little chaotic: every move is a real, physical shot, so the best plan in the world can still be undone by one bad bounce. Chess players call this "unsound." We call it Tuesday. It's free, and it always will be.
Questions, ideas, or a bounce that felt personal? Open an issue on GitHub.
Strategy, allegedly
Dispatches from the study of a game with more collisions than theory.
Opening Theory for a Game With No Second Move
A field guide to building your own army — turtle or charge — why you attack with the big pieces, hoard your pawns, and treat your first shot as both a plan and an apology in advance.
Read the dispatch →Defending Your King: A Study in Standing in the Way
On pawn walls, bodyguard theory, and the noble art of moving your king to the corner and hoping nobody notices him there.
Read the dispatch →The board reports.
I came for the chess. I stayed for the violence.
Unsound. Completely unsound. Play it again.
I blocked with my whole body. It's the job description.
The king isn't going to topple himself.
No account, no install, no idea what happens after the second bounce. Just like the pros.
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