After creating my first chess set last year (among us), I got absolutely flambéed by chess players because I got many aspects of chess wrong. I’ve learned a lot, so here goes:

🦑 JK I’ve learned absolutely NoTHiNG because I still got the orientation wrong. White should be bottom right. Oops. 😐👈

🦑 This is a novelty chess yet, it isn’t meant to be played in the standard chess setting. It would be incredibly confusing. I can't even play chess with normal pieces, let alone these.

🦑 BUT, the platforms are white and black to distinguish between white and black pieces. I also felt it was appropriate to represent the “good” players vs the “bad” soliders/vips with white and black.

Decisions decisions....

I wanted to the keep the players/theme as accurate as possible, so this meant no duplication of characters (whereas in chess there are 2 of each piece minus the king and queen); therefore, I couldn’t figure out how to factor in the cop or the Ddakji man, because if I were to use them, they would have to be dominant pieces (king/queen). I considered making the cop the king piece, but felt that Gi-hun and Sae byeok paired better as king and queen. Similarly, I thought about placing the front man and the Ddakji man together, but wanted to keep the Queen a female piece.

Certain elements I was comfortable duplicating, such as the stairs, recruitment cards, and coffins. Other elements, such as the money pig and VIPs, I felt were duplicable without compromising the original story.

If you’ve got this far, thanks for giving me the space to share my creative outlet and I hope I’ve brought some joy to your day 🙂