Zugzwang

The Textfire Demo 12-pack was released on April Fool's in 1998, claiming to be demos of an upcoming commercial studio called Textfire.

In this game, you play a pawn in a chess game. The game shows you the chess board. The storyline is actually pretty entertaining; it's fun being a pawn. This was a joke demo; it actually would be great to do a chess game where you saw inside all the character's heads, their thought process, etc.

Zugzwang puts you in the position of a chess piece close to the end of a game. Sounds quirky? It definitely is.

The game is extremely short (10 turns) and extremely linear (two paths). For me that's a classic candidate for 1, max 2 stars. The game is so quirky though - the setting alone is unique, but there's also dialogue between the individual chess pieces, IF-style description of the events, optional examining - it still sucks as a game, but it has so much potential, and as a "proof of concept" it sort of shines. I constantly had to think of a Romeo and Juliet story unfolding through a chess game. Too bad this is just a (term used by game) demo.