LASKA: Column checkers

Rules

Laska is a checkers (or draughts) variant invented by Emanuel Lasker, the second World Chess Champion. Captured pieces are taken prisoner instead of being removed from the board. A captured piece is placed underneath the piece that captured it, forming a column. The piece on top commands the column.

You capture by jumping over an opponent’s column. Only its commander is taken prisoner, so the piece revealed underneath takes control of the remaining column. This lets you free your own pieces. Capturing is mandatory, but when several capture routes are available, you choose which one to take.

The game is played on a 7x7 board. Soldiers move and capture forwards, and are promoted to officers when they reach the last row. Officers can also move and capture backwards. You win when your opponent cannot make a move: all their pieces have either been taken prisoner or become blocked (stalemating your opponent wins the game).

Classic mode

Play against the computer at different difficulty levels or against a friend on the same device. The game also includes a position editor. Arrange pieces and columns however you like, save the position, then play from it or set up an automated battle by letting the computer play against itself.

Story mode

You start by learning the game in kindergarten and later take part in tournaments. Between games, you get to know characters and the stories leading up to your matches against them. There are puzzles to solve, opening lessons, full matches and bosses at the end of each chapter. In two-game matches, you play the same position from both sides: once as Green, once as Red.

Roguelike

Work your way through the dungeon floors, choosing rooms and fighting opponents on the board. Along the way, you collect coins, keys, bombs, potions and relics. Relics give you extra abilities, such as merging, splitting or pulling columns, or swapping sides before a battle. You also encounter special rooms, merchants and other characters. Defeating bosses unlocks more floors and items for future runs.

About the project and AI use

I hand-coded the original game and the algorithms the computer uses to play. I later vibe-coded Story and Roguelike for fun and to add more variety to the project.

Hand-coded features:

• Implementation of rules and interactive 3D board, supporting local play, a position editor and computer-versus-computer matches.

• Computer opponent (bot) engine with multiple difficulty levels, using minimax and its variants, a transposition table, and other optimizations.

• My own heuristic evaluation function for material and position, which takes the order of pieces within columns into account.

Vibe-coded features:

• Roguelike: items, rooms, opponent names and traits + over 160 relics!

• Story: the dialogue, characters and jokes were made up by AI - 20 chapters, each ending with a boss match!

• A neural network evaluation function (NNUE), trained on synthetic data from games played by the hand-coded bot and from the neural network's own self-play. It was used to build the opening book and find interesting starting positions (the bots in game still use the heuristic eval).

• Most of the UI, artwork and icons.

• Things even I don’t know that are there xD