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Theoretically, I like chess. I learned it at a very young age, and defeated the uncle who taught me, hollowing his soul and cursing myself to a decade with nobody to play it with. That decade probably kept me from being the kind of person who memorises moves and has special names for things from a textbook. In a way, it made me.

5D Chess, on the other hand, makes me feel like that uncle likely did. This is not possible. How. What. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I have yet to experience a single defeat or victory that I understood. And I dont like it.

The basic idea of 5D Chess is that instead of moving your pieces around as normal, you can (sometimes) send them back in time, to add them to an earlier state that the board was in. It does this not in the Achron way, with its single timeline periodically reordering events and erasing units in an attempt to enforce linear causality.

Instead, whenever a unit goes back in time, a new timeline is formed. This means two boards are now in play, running parallel to each other, and you have to make a move on each of them. You can then move pieces through time again, opening a third timeline, or crossing between the current two.

You might think this makes for some immensely satisfying matches where you and your opponent get embroiled in escalating mindgames and interlinked plots and decoys, only for one of you to pull off a brilliant victory by suddenly moving the piece you sent back in time for no apparent reason 8 moves ago.

What actually happens is that you keep winning games but you have absolutely no idea why. You see this? Im playing as black here, and Ive just won. I didnt question it at first.

Cuh, pfft, OBVIOUSLY Sin this is Horgdens 9th Upper Galician maneouvre, you amateur. Did you even study chess?

But then no. No, this isnt checkmate. They can move their king. And its not hopeless either. If they move their king to the right, theyre fine. I cant even hurt them much on my next turn. Sure, theyre clearly on the defensive, and I fancy my chances, but its still open.

An old friend called our playstyle Erosion Chess. Devastating each others armies as much as possible is more fun than a rapid technical knockout.

A few games later I think I got why this one was checkmate. After suffering several defeats that were very similar, I learned that you lose the game if you cant make as many moves as there are active timelines. Quite often, if your king only has one escape route, its all over. This makes a charging queen even more absurdly powerful, and honestly? Its very anticlimactic. I keep being surprised by my own victories.

But it gets weirder than this. When you send a unit back in time, it doesnt move how youd expect. Say your bishop, which normally moves diagonally, moves to another board. It doesnt go directly to the same physical location, nor does it just transfer its diagonal moves to another board. Instead, each piece has its own new rules on how it moves when going back in time or jumping to another timeline.

Its a fun concept, but what it means in practice is now you have a tonne of new oblique rules to think about, and instead of a single board where you can see every possibility, you now need to scroll around and mentally cross-reference as many boards as there have been turns in the game so far, and potentially multiplied several times if you have several timelines going. And it means that games are often won because now a knight is actively threatening a load of extra squares on a board from six moves ago.

Ill be honest, I kind of hate it. The time travel is one thing, but combining it with the weird physical movement is such a ballache that I just end up playing regular chess instead, doing my best to ignore my opponents schemes. I am, ironically, like an old European king, idiotically playing pompous games while Napoleons armies cheat by being competent instead of posh. They didnt understand why they kept losing, and only won kind of by accident, too.

I stick to one timeline, and only travel in order to chase down and root out fleeing kings. I want a film about this now.

My brain is already an ever shifting Gordian knot of possibilities when Im not playing chess. I dont need this in my life. But what really gets me is this game:

Dont get me wrong, I was still a massive boffin in primary school. If Id got into chess Id be insufferable now.

Im playing as black, right. You might notice that the opponent has two kings dont worry about that too much. This is the second of two timelines, and their king from the original has fled here. If I capture either of the kings on this board I win. I have a few plans for doing that. I decide to move my pawn on the left to take the white horsey, giving room to bring my castle into play.

Its probably terrible being extreeeemely good at chess. After a certain point, winning every time must get embarassing.

Oh, thats checkmate. Ive won.

WHAT.

When I click on the exclamation mark, a line appears to explain that my horsey in the top right corner is able to take the king in the past? But neither of them has moved for several turns, so why can it do that now but what?

I hate it when people use castling defensively. Cowards. Send out your king. Outgrow your useless tyrant class. Join us.

For the sake of completeness, heres the other active board. I moved my bishop up a bit, threatening neither king.

I find an unusual trick more satisfying than winning, which probably explains a lot about my life.

WHAT? WHAT? HOW? HOW IN THE EVERLASTING CHRIST WAS THAT A WINNING I mean, uh ha ha! You see? Foolish challenger! You ignorant peasants should stick to ONE DEE chess, fnaw fnaw. I am very smart.

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Actual 5D Chess proves that time travel should not be allowed - Rock Paper Shotgun