Checkers
Jump and king your way to victory on the classic 8×8 board
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About This Game
The timeless strategy game, brought to the EchoForge Arcade. Play American-rules checkers against an AI opponent with three difficulty levels. Move your red pieces diagonally forward, capture by jumping over the opponent's pieces, and reach the far side to crown a king that moves in both directions.
The AI uses minimax search with alpha-beta pruning — on Easy it looks a couple of moves ahead, while on Hard it plans six moves deep with positional strategy. Captures are mandatory, multi-jumps chain automatically, and the game tracks your wins across sessions.
How to Play
- Click one of your red pieces to select it — valid moves light up in gold
- Click a highlighted square to move there
- Pieces move diagonally forward one square
- Jump over an opponent's piece to capture it — jumps are mandatory
- If another jump is available after capturing, you must continue the chain
- Reach the opponent's back row to promote your piece to a King
- Kings can move and capture diagonally in both directions
- Win by capturing all opponent pieces or blocking them from moving
Tips & Strategy
Control the center of the board for maximum move options
Race to get kings early — they're significantly more powerful
Keep your back row intact as long as possible to prevent opponent kings
Force trades when you're ahead in pieces
Set up double-jump opportunities for big swings
Features
✓ Full American checkers rules
✓ Mandatory captures and multi-jump chains
✓ King promotion with bidirectional movement
✓ 3 AI difficulty levels (minimax with alpha-beta pruning)
✓ Click-to-select interface with move highlights
✓ Win tracking across sessions
✓ Responsive canvas — plays on any screen size
Controls
Desktop
Click to select a piece, click a highlighted square to move.
Mobile
Tap to select, tap to move.
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