Cloaking Chess Pieces

Chess still remains one of the best strategic turn-based games ever invented. Over the years, though, nobody dared to change or update the rules of this game. Maybe the rules are so perfect that they don’t need to be changed. Instead, we could work on improving the way we interact with the game pieces. One step has already been made with the magnetic/digital combo sets. A new way to enhance not only chess skills, but also attention skills comes in the form of chess pieces stored in special glassy cylinders.

DVice explains that this new concept is inspired by Lewis Caroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”. As previously mentioned, all the chess pieces are each contained in a cylinder that turns opaque, as if pulling an invisible cloack on them when they are removed from the board. The pieces turn transparent again as soon as they make contact with the special board.

One of the ideas behind this chess set is to show that chess pieces have no real value for the players, unless they're in play. Another more pragmatic idea is to actually baffle players with bad attention skills since they'll most likely forget which piece is in their hand after they pick it up. That will force players to thoroughly concentrate on the game, paying more attention to the strategic moves.

The design is signed by Yasmin Sethi.