It's hard to explain just how completely packed Xeno Versa is. Though it sits on a 30 square board, like Mini Chess, it will feature potentially up to 81 unique pieces when complete. Furthermore, when a piece moves, it rotates. And when a piece rotates, its moves rotate. This means that there will be 81 pieces with 8 directions, or 648 combined possible moves. (Compare this to Mini Chess, which has 6 distinct pieces and no rotation!) The 81 pieces are, in fact, 27 ship "classes" that each promote twice. Promotions are no longer rank-based but rather power-ups will appear randomly on the board. This game is indeed the mother of all (mini) chess games.

The code enhancements required to put together Xeno Versa have also enabled me to produce other 30 square board games even more rapidly. Though it was already fast to put together a game like Mini Shatranj, it is now ridiculously fast. Any chess game can be placed on top the same engine without recompilation!

Pics soon. Things are coming together nicely, but for now all I'll share is the placeholder icon that marks this blog post.