Shogi · Japanese chess · on your phone
A room for shogi.
Ranked games at two speeds. Friends by code. A bot with twelve levels. The day's tsume. And a review of every game, at the same table you played it on.
Android: closed test now, invites by email. iOS: after Android.
A real capture from the current build: a game against the bot, two pawns in hand.
After the game · 感想戦
Study it together.
In shogi a game is not finished when it ends. Both players go back over it together, move by move; the custom is called kansōsen. Here the room stays open for exactly that: one shared board, arrows in your own colour, the engine's line for the position in front of you, and the same chat you had during the game.
Then one tap for a rematch, colours swapped.
The vermilion arrow is yours, the tea-green one is theirs. Turning the page clears them, like a real board.
Puzzles
One tsume a day, and a ladder to climb.
Tsume are mate problems, the traditional way: your pieces, the defender's king, and every other piece in the defender's hand. One arrives each day. Under it, mates lifted from real games at your puzzle rating, where more than one move may work and pieces may be left over, because that is how it is over the board.
A ladder runs from mate in one upward. Two hundred solves at ninety percent first-try accuracy move you up; a hint or a wrong first move counts as a miss.
Every game, reviewed
Where it turned.
Every game you play is kept and analysed on the phone. The line under the board is the evaluation move by move; the dots mark the moments the game turned. Drag across it to land on any position, then try a better move against the bot from right there.
The line up close: above the middle is good for you; the dots are the moments the game turned, each with a note on what was better.
Friends and a word at the table
A code, a link, a game.
Create a room and read the six characters out, or send the link. The game starts when your friend arrives. Chat has stamps, a few phrases, and a line of text; report and block are one tap away, and you can switch chat off altogether.
Learn
Lessons played, not read.
Ten lessons on the board itself: how each piece moves, what a drop is, why promotion matters, and how to build your first castle, the Mino. Every step is a move you make, and an arrow shows where the piece goes.
Not sure what a piece does yet? Switch the faces to Guide and every piece carries its own moves as dots, or to Initial for kanji with a letter. Notation can be Western or Japanese, and the signage can read in English.
New to shogi?
Chess, as it grew up in Japan.
A 9×9 board and twenty pieces a side. Pieces promote when they cross into the far third. And one rule that changes everything: a piece you capture becomes yours, and on a later turn you may drop it back onto the board.
The app teaches the pieces and your first castle inside the game. Start with how to play, the pieces and the castles; today’s tsume is playable here too.
Get the app
Closed test on Android.
Shogi Castle is in closed testing on Google Play. Ask for an invite and we send you the link the same day. iOS follows once Android is out of the beta.
Ask for an inviteFree to play. English now; Japanese and Turkish next. No account needed to start; a Google or Apple sign-in later keeps your rank and games when you change phones.