ContentsChapter I
The Journey
Your father hands you the family chess set and tells you to go. Someone is always one step ahead of you.
On your eighteenth birthday, your father comes down from the attic with the family chess set — sixteen pieces, polished for one more journey — and gives you one instruction: pack a bag, walk out the door, and become a Grandmaster.
You are not walking the road alone. From the first morning, someone is always just ahead of you: a polite young stranger who seems to know exactly where you will be, and beats you there. He keeps, he admits, “a little calendar of you.” He is never nasty about it, and you cannot avoid him — he just gets there first, plays you, and carries on up the road, a little stronger every time.
The whole journey is the story of catching up to him.
“I am always one step ahead lately — and it is lonely out in front, so catch up. When we finally play, I want your best.”— a note left on Route 2, for whoever was good enough to find it
what you actually do
Walk. Talk. Battle. Catch. Grow.
- Walk
Nine towns, nine roads, real weather and a real clock. One real hour is one full Casteria day.
- Talk
Everyone in town has something to say, and a surprising number of them will teach you something real about chess.
- Battle
Every fight is real chess against a real chess program, and every opponent plays at a fixed strength you can see.
- Catch
Wild pieces set you a checkmate puzzle instead of a fight. Solve it and they join you. No luck, no catch rate.
- Grow
You play six pieces at a time. Level them up towards 70, fill a collection of 272, and win the Championship.
the side stories
Thirty-nine tales that have nothing to do with winning.
People on the road ask you for things. Someone starts a story, each step points you at another person to go and find, and a handful end in a game of chess you have to win. They pay experience and Pawn Bucks — and a few of them quietly unlock things you would never find otherwise.
Four are quick errands. Thirty are proper journeys across several towns. Five are long enough to be called epics. Two, for a taste:
- The Cartographer’s GapFileena’s master atlas of the roads is finished — except for three tiny corners of grass her predecessors marked unwalked, and nobody has walked since. She cannot sleep for them. Go and stand on all three.Finish it and the Route Map item you can buy starts working.
- The Collector’s RegretA date farmer in Dunemarch is worried about his neighbour, who owns more boards and pieces than the rest of the town put together and has never opened a single case. Over the fence he asked a strange question: whether a piece you caught looks at you differently.Finish it and the collector opens his case — there is a king in it.
The free demo is the first part of the game — two towns, Openfield and Frostford, and the road between them. Everything you catch there carries straight into the full game.