We Love It's Guide to…

The Board is Yours

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.

98%
of 40 reviews
$2.00
$2.50
-20%
Released: Apr 29, 2026  •  Developer: Draelent  •  Publisher: Draelent

The Developer Says...

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.

Back of the Box Details

Steam Deck

Unknown

DLC

None

DRM/EULA Notices

None

Achievements

None

Ratings

None

Metacritic

None

Content Notices

None

Controller Support

None

Reviews

98%

Overwhelmingly Positive

Based on 40 reviews


Individual reviews are not available yet.