Timur's Chess

Timur's Chess is a fully playable web revival of Tamerlane chess, the grand chess variant favored by the 14th-century Central Asian warlord Timur (Tamerlane). Played on a sprawling 10-by-11 board with 28 pieces per side, it is one of the most exotic variants in chess history, featuring pieces that exist nowhere in modern chess: the giraffe, the camel, the vizier, the war engine, and the elephant. Almost nobody plays it today, partly because the rules are famously intricate — this project exists to change that.

What makes it especially worth featuring is how it came to be: the entire game was built as a weekend vibecoding project. Author LarsDu88 introduced it on Hacker News Show HN on October 11, 2026 with the words: "My weekend vibecoding project was to attempt to resurrect a 14th century chess variant favored by the Central Asian warlord Timur (Tamerlane)." In a single weekend, a set of medieval rules became a real, playable digital game.

This is not a toy demo. The site ships with a working AI chess engine you can challenge across multiple difficulty levels, from casual up to the "Strategist" tier and beyond, with a level-comparison tool to gauge your opponent. Multiplayer is covered three ways: online matches against friends, local two-player on one screen, or solo against the computer. A field guide teaches every piece's movement, a "History of Timur's chess" section covers the origins, and even the historical setup traditions are modeled — you can pick between historical army arrays (Masculine, Feminine, Ibn Arabshah) plus the optional "Emergency royal swap" rule. Matches can be saved and reloaded, and you can play as Ivory or Obsidian.

The whole presentation leans into the period atmosphere: dark parchment styling, an armored Timur illustration on the home screen, "Begin a match" matchmaking, and a story section ("The Caravan") alongside the rules. The site is live and playable right now, free to open in a browser. For chess-variant fans, this is a rare chance to actually play Tamerlane chess against a competent engine without assembling a physical board and a rules scholar — and for vibe-coding watchers, it is proof of what a focused weekend of AI-assisted building can resurrect.