Zeitnot
Chess you already know, rules you don't. Pieces have HP and gear. Shop between fights, stack gambits, roll the dice if you're feeling stupid. Lose the trial, lose the run.
You know how chess works. You don't know what happens when your knight takes a hit instead of a square.
Zeitnot is a roguelike played on a chessboard. Your pieces aren't abstract threats they have health, attack, and slots for shields, weapons, hats, and auras. Captures are fights. A failed strike can bounce back. Shields reflect damage. Guns and projectiles turn quiet squares into kill zones. The board still reads like chess; the outcomes often don't.
The loop
Between trials you hit the shop: buy pieces, pick up equipment and gambits, arrange your formation, reroll if the offers suck. Then you walk into a trial against an enemy lineup — with bosses waiting further in. Win and you push the run forward. Lose and it's over.
What you're actually building
Equipment — strap gear onto individual pieces, not just your whole army
Gambits — passive rules that fire on captures, damage, turn start, and whatever else you've stacked
Scrolls — one-shot effects you burn at the right moment
Gold — pieces, packs, crates, coin flips, dice rolls; safe shop or greedy shop
No preset build wins every run. All-in offense, reflect tanks, turn start burn, high-risk shop plays the board punishes and rewards all of them differently.
Why it's weird (in a good way)
You're not hunting a single checkmate line every game. Sometimes the right move wins the fight. Sometimes it keeps a piece alive for one more turn. Sometimes it wrecks the enemy's next turn before they can act. Chess intuition still matters — but so does how you geared up three shops ago.
Set your formation. Enter the trial. The move you make next is the bill for every choice before it.