The Knight's Tour

About the Game

The Knight’s Tour invites you to participate in a playful deconstruction of logic through the re-imagining of a familiar game. It is an exploration of what happens when a system as precise as chess is nudged, twisted, and reframed, resulting in an exhaustive catalogue of deviant-games.

When the 21st-century chess is remixed, a collection of fantastical games is generated from the collision of novel ideas. The museum of imaginary games seeks to then classify these variants into different galleries based on their defining qualities. Variants that alter the shape and size of the board are situated under a wing labeled 'Topology'. Games that introduce new pieces like the Cannon, or the Wizard, for example, are housed in the 'Fairy Chess' gallery. If one were to extrapolate further, you could imagine concepts based on the end-game, or even the number of turns each player can take.

In the logical cosmos, a thinker can pose several questions: What if the knight grew wings? What if rooks slid diagonally? What if a non-existent piece like the cannon could shoot across the board? What if a hawk could carry a pawn to safety in its talons? What if rivers permeated the board? What if the board looped back on itself? What if victory did not depend on checkmate? These imaginary games are models of how the original rule-set responds to revision. Each variant game is a toy universe governed by its own internal rules.