Team Chess

Team Chess is an adaption of the bughouse chess variant. It involves four players (divided into two teams) who play on two boards. In principle the standard rules apply with one big difference: each time a player captures a piece, it is passed to the teammate. Instead of making a regular move, the player can place on of those pieces on any free square. The game is over as soon as one player accomplishes a checkmate or if one runs out of time (each participant has five minutes which expire when it is his/her turn). There are three game modes available: auto match (matchmaking over Xbox Live), arranged teams (creating online matches with selected partners) and offline matches (require four participants). Each online match rewards experience points and eventually leads to level-ups. This unlocks some strategy hints, but is essentially only used for matchmaking. In theory the game can also be played alone. However, the CPU players have no AI and only make random moves.