Veiled Dominion

Duet

Repo · Engine · Loptr Lab

New here? Type e2e4 in the box below and press Enter to make your first move.

Two players on this device. White moves first; then pass the device to Black.

Move History

Radius of Ruin

Sanctuary

Selected piece

Legal target

How to Move

Click a piece to select it

Click a target square to move

Or type e2e4 in the command bar

Amber wash = Radius of Ruin

Sanctuary blocks the veil near Death

Board controls

Tab to Navigate board. Arrow keys move the cursor; Enter selects a piece, then a target. Escape cancels; R reads the square. Tab leaves the board. Typed moves and square queries remain available below.

Navigate board · arrow keys and Enter

Cursor starts at e2.

Remap keyboard or adaptive-switch keys

Choose an action, then press its new key. Each key must be unique. Settings last until this page is refreshed. Devices must send keyboard keys; direct gamepad and TV-remote support are not included.

Audio and spoken feedback · testing

Audio is off by default. Speech uses only voices reported by your browser as installed locally. No microphone or model service is used. Keep spoken feedback off when using a screen reader to avoid duplicate speech. Preferences reset on refresh.

Turn spoken feedback on before testing a voice.

Installed local voice

Cue volume 50%

Speech volume 70%

Speech speed 1×

The toolbar Audio Cue button controls the continuous proximity tone. Test tone plays a short sample independently. Voice commands, direct gamepads and TV-remote support are not included.

Expand and choose Refresh voices to check local speech availability.

Need Help?

PIXIE has eight fixed answers about DUET rules, controls, and accessibility. If a question is not recognized, PIXIE uses fixed game answers on this device. Questions are not sent or saved. Remote play, undo, Fog Mode and platform-specific controls are outside this recovery build.

Your question

✦

Rebirth

☠

Death

Fog Mode — Rules

Terrain

The board rises from a height of 0 on each side's home rank to a height of 3 across the center two ranks, like the terraced board this mode is modeled on. Terrain affects sight and combat, not movement — pieces still move exactly as in classic chess, including Veiled pieces' one-square restriction.

Vision & Fog of War

Each piece sees a radius of squares: 2 for Pawns, 3 for standard pieces, 4 for Rebirth and Death (drops by 1 while Veiled). Standing on higher ground extends that radius by 1 square for every level you're above the target square. Standing on lower ground, you cannot see past a higher square unless it's adjacent to you. Squares are either currently visible, previously seen but stale (shown dimmed — the piece there may have moved since), or unexplored (shown black).

Querying a square with the command bar (or asking a screen reader to look) reports only what you'd actually know: the true contents if visible, the last-known contents with a staleness warning if stale, or "unexplored" if you've never seen it. You may still attempt a move into fog — legality is checked against the true board, same as a calculated risk in the dark.

Combat

Moving onto an enemy-occupied square attacks it instead of capturing instantly. Each piece has HP and an attack value:

Pawn: 10 HP / 4 dmg · Knight & Bishop: 20 HP / 8 dmg · Rook: 28 HP / 10 dmg · Queen: 40 HP / 14 dmg · Rebirth: 30 HP / 6 dmg · Death: unkillable, cannot attack or be attacked.

Attacking from higher ground deals 25% more damage. If the target survives, your piece holds its position — the fight continues over future turns. If the target is reduced to 0 HP, it's removed and your piece moves into the square, same as a classic capture (a promoting Pawn becomes a full-HP Rebirth).

Handoff

Duet is a single shared screen, so Fog Mode uses an honor-system handoff between turns: pass the device and look away until the next player is ready to reveal their view. This isn't enforced by the software — it works the same way a physical hidden-information board game does.

Known limits

The AI opponent and Spectator mode are disabled in Fog Mode — the AI's move selection doesn't yet account for HP combat, so it's human vs. human only for now.

Lore

Rebirth

She was made too bright. Formed by Death after a broken law in Heaven, Rebirth carries a power she hasn't learned to carry safely — any rival that lingers too close to her gets stripped down to its most basic capability. She isn't cruel. She's simply more than the board was built to hold.

Death

Her mentor, and the only stable ground near her. He cannot be captured, cannot be pushed aside, and friendly pieces standing close enough to him are shielded from the rival Rebirth's aura. Not a guardian standing over a weapon — a teacher, still midway through the lesson.

The Radius of Ruin & Sanctuary

Rebirth's presence Veils enemy pieces that end their turns within one square of her — reducing them to pawn-like movement. Death's Sanctuary protects friendly pieces within one square from that Veil.

Project Support Status

Duet remains free to play. Financial contributions are temporarily paused while Loptr Lab completes its legal-entity and financial-compliance review. No payment is requested or accepted through this page.

You can still support the project without sending money by playing, reporting accessibility issues, and reviewing the open-source work through the repository link below.

DUET · Local play recovery

Two players on this device or a local computer opponent. No account, cloud service, model API, telemetry or saved-game service is used. Refreshing closes this match. This is a tested recovery build; independent accessibility acceptance remains pending.

Board controls

Game Log (Visual History)

Move & Event History

Fog Mode — Rules

Terrain

Vision & Fog of War

Combat

Handoff

Known limits

Rebirth

Death

The Radius of Ruin & Sanctuary

DUET · Local play recovery