Portugues
You Won't Get Her Back
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About the game
The war was his fault, of course. You would have won it easily if you had not tried so hard to keep your wife, the white queen, alive. Now the board is almost empty. Across the battlefield the enemy king smirks from his corner and calls out that you will never get her back. You have one pawn left, very far advanced. He has a rook.
You play the white king, and each place in the game is a square of the chessboard, drawn in text with every piece on it. Your commands are chess moves, and the puzzle is a famous endgame study: a position that looks hopeless or at best drawn, with exactly one way to win. The story is the king's: a grieving monarch who thinks there might still be a way across the board.
You do not need to know the rules. The game explains how each piece moves, can list every legal move for you, and even accepts plain directions for the king. Andrew Schultz, who also wrote The Problems Compound and Threediopolis, made it for ParserComp 2022. A successful game takes only a few minutes; working out how takes longer.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. The game first asks whether
you want the full introduction; press F or I to read it, or S to skip it. Then
it asks whether to switch on a text-only mode for screen readers: answer no
to see the chessboard, or yes for a description in words. The game is in
English.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
a square, such as c7 |
move your pawn to that square |
Ke5, or a direction such as se |
move your king |
c8, or c8= plus a piece letter |
promote the pawn when it reaches the last rank; plain c8 makes a queen |
ch (or chess) |
list every legal move in the position |
moves on / moves off |
show the legal moves along with the board, or hide them |
look (l) |
draw the board again |
opt |
display options for the board |
v (or verbs) |
the full list of commands |
about, credits |
background on the game and the puzzle |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
There is no undo. Like a real game of chess, moves cannot be taken back. A full attempt is short, so restarting costs little.
The obvious move is not always the winning one. The enemy defends well, and natural-looking moves often end in a draw. Think about what he will do next.
Use the move list. If you have never played chess, ch shows everything
you are allowed to do, which turns the puzzle into a question of choosing
well.
Your king can walk like an adventurer. Directions such as n or sw
move the king one square, just as they would move you between rooms.
Credits and licence
You Won't Get Her Back was written by Andrew Schultz for ParserComp 2022; the version served here is the final competition release, from the author's itch.io page. The author dedicated the game to the public domain under Creative Commons Zero, and its source code is in the game's repository on GitHub. The cover image in the original file is not covered by the dedication and is not distributed here. The licence text is linked from this page.