That’s the message from Fragile Shapes Studio, the indie team behind Beyond The Board, a surreal, minimalist puzzle adventure unveiled during the OTK Games Expo and now available to try in demo form on Steam.
While Beyond The Board takes cues from chess, don’t expect rules or traditional checkmates. Instead, imagine if Monument Valley collided with Limbo inside a shattered chessboard. You play as a lone Rook, flung into a fractured world after a lightning strike warps the board mid-match. With the rest of your party lost and the enemy King on the run, your mission is to chase answers across cursed landscapes and collapsing realms.
Each level becomes a riddle of movement and perception. Forget what you know about how a Rook moves—these tiles shift, vanish, and react to your presence in unexpected ways. Enemy pieces stalk the map with their own twisted logic, while hidden pathways and boss battles push your puzzle-solving skills to their limit.
Fragile Shapes Studio, based in Porto, Portugal, is a two-person team focused on creating moody, visually striking worlds. Their debut project, Beyond The Board, tells its story through pure atmosphere—no dialogue, no tutorials, just music, movement, and the haunting spaces between.
“This demo is just the beginning, a first look at the shifting landscapes, defying puzzles, and quiet mysteries that define our game,”
says Guilherme Gama, Programmer & Visual Artist.
“Our design philosophy was to create a game that unfolds itself to you step by step, without saying a single word,”
adds Bruno Mascarenhas, Game & Audio Designer.
Beyond The Board key features
- Explore fractured lands – Traverse minimalist worlds echoing with broken history and soft mystery.
- Reimagined movement mechanics – Classic chess logic is thrown out the window. Prepare to think differently.
- Face enemies and bosses – Learn their strange rules through observation and exploit their patterns to progress.
- Unlock secrets and replay – Return to old levels with new insight and abilities to uncover deeper layers of the story.
The demo for Beyond The Board is available now on Steam, offering a tantalising first glimpse into this quietly captivating world. Wishlist the game to stay updated as development continues.
Link to Steam page: Beyond The Board on Steam
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