The Board is Yours

The Board is Yours

Released Apr 2026

The Board is Yours is a strategic chess-based incremental game: buy squares, unlock upgrades, and chain synergies through defended pieces. It plays as a demanding idle game where you’ll constantly reposition pieces and optimize your production until the board belongs to you.

97% positive · 46 reviews
Pending
Released · Awaiting evaluation
Pending
Released · Awaiting evaluation

Where to buy

Steam $2.50
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Media

Details

Developer
Publisher
Draelent
Achievements
31
Platform
Windows
Controller
—
Steam Deck
Not rated
Players
Single-player

About this game

A WAY-TOO-COMPLEX INCREMENTAL GAME

It looks like chess, it feels like an idle game, but it plays like: "How do I even optimize this?". Forget upgrades that give 5% here and 10% there, this new take on incremental games forces you to actually think about the perks you buy and adapt how you play in consequence.

HOW TO ACTUALLY PLAY

  • Buy squares of the board, chess pieces, and place your pieces to generate resources.

  • Focus way too hard on seemingly unsolvable optimization problems and question your sanity.

  • Go grab a coffee. Maybe take a nap.

  • Come back to billions and invest in upgrades to gain more.

  • Stack prestige perks and restart with new ways to gain even more. Always more.

    And repeat, until the board belongs to you.

YOU'LL PROBABLY LIKE THIS IF YOU:

  • Enjoy incremental games and know about chess

  • Like to solve "how far can I push this?" challenges

  • Appreciate when upgrades are meaningful and entirely change how you play and think about the game

  • Don’t mind restarting runs to test new ideas

  • Are just looking for a couple of hours swinging between despair and satisfaction

YOU'LL PROBABLY HATE THIS IF YOU:

  • Want a low-effort idle game you can ignore in the background

  • Don't like diving deep into dense stats tooltips

  • Get upset when some official chess rules are missing from a chess-inspired game

  • Expect a profound story, dialogue, cinematic cutscenes, or a battle pass

A note from the dev

I built this game to see how far I could push strategic thinking in an incremental game. Well, I think the honest answer is: a bit too far. Mixing these genre was definitely a strange idea, but I hope some of you will enjoy picking systems apart and finding disgusting optimizations. I'm genuinely curious to see what you'll do with it.

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