Iron Arena — v2.3

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Game Rules

IRON ARENA is a chess-like game, with three different piece sets (factions):

• Players take turns moving their pieces on the 9x9 board.
• Capturing works similarly to chess, although there are other ways to destroy enemy pieces.
• Some pieces have special abilities which are activated after moving.
• Some pieces gain special abilities on reaching the Electric Field (middle row).
• Some pieces activate special abilities on reaching the end row.
• A player wins by capturing the enemy "king-piece" (Father Time, The Mistress, The Scientist). A Clockworks player may also win by moving Father Time to the end row.
• Unlike Chess, there is no stalemate, and a player may move their king piece into check. It is up to the other player to end the game.
• A player which causes a board position to appear for a third time loses the game by repetition.
• A games ends in a draw after 160 moves have been played.

CLOCKWORK FACTION - movement rules:

• COG: moves one square forwards diagonally. On reaching the Electric Field: may also move one square diagonally backwards. On reaching the end row or by combining with another Cog: turns into a Gear piece.
• GEAR: moves one square in any direction. Created from one or two Cog piece(s).
• PENDULUM: moves one square in any direction, or any distance horizontally.
• SPRING: moves one square in any direction. RECOIL ability: may move the maximum distance in any direction, if there is an empty adjacent square in the opposite direction.
• HANDS: moves up to four squares in any direction.
• DIAL: moves one square orthogonally. RECALL ability: after moving, may send an enemy piece (except a king-piece or another Dial) in its line of sight back to any starting square for that piece type.
• FATHER TIME: moves one square diagonally forwards, or up to two squares forwards. On reaching the end row: wins the game.

BLADES FACTION - movement rules:

• DAGGER: moves up to two squares forward, or one square sideways. On reaching the electric field: can move one square diagonally forwards. Stab mechanic: may move two squares to capture; always retreats one square after capturing. On reaching the end row: can ASSASSINATE any enemy piece (applies to a king-piece only if is it the only enemy piece left).
• AXE: moves one square orthogonally. SLASH ability: after moving, may destroy all pieces (including friendly pieces) in the three squares diagonally and immediately ahead.
• SICKLE: moves one square orthogonally then two or three squares in a perpendicular direction. Can leap over other pieces.
• SABRES: moves up to five squares diagonally.
• SWORD: moves up to five squares orthogonally.
• THE MISTRESS: moves one square in any direction. After reaching the Electric Field: can SIDESTEP (move one extra square in any direction) after capturing.

AXIOM FACTION - movement rules:

• PHIAL: moves one or two squares forward. On reaching the electric field: can move one square sideways. On reaching the end row: will automatically DETONATE, destroying all friendly and enemy pieces within three squares.
• MAGNET: moves one square in any direction. ATTRACT ability: after moving, may pull a friendly or enemy piece (except an enemy king-piece) along its line of sight.
• TORCH: moves one square in any direction. BURN ability: after moving, may destroy an adjacent enemy.
• SCALES: move any distance orthogonally. Capture mechanic: captures by leaping over another (friendly or enemy) piece.
• TELESCOPE: moves by at least three squares in any direction.
• THE SCIENTIST: moves one square orthogonally. Cannot capture.

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Player Info

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Dev Notes

The two games I have played most in my life are CHESS and STARCRAFT, so it was natural to attempt to combine elements of the two. The result after much experimenting was IRON ARENA.

The entire game was vibe-coded using Open AI's GPT-Codex, accessed via Visual Studio Code. Most of the code is written in Python and Java Script. Other free software tools are used for various stages of development:

• Chat-GPT for generating ideas and a small number of graphics (mainly logos and emblems).
• Netron for viewing onnx files.
• DB Browser for reading the player database.
• Sound effects are created in Logic Pro or taken from the BBC Sounds Archive.
• The game is hosted on Cloudflare.

The AI player was trained using an Alpha Zero style approach, i.e. combination of Monte Carlo Tree Search and an ONNX neural network. The current neural network uses a compact 7‑layer CNN backbone that preserves the 9×9 grid: a 3×3 stem expands 22 input planes to 64 channels, followed by six 3×3 convolutions at 64→64 to build board features before the policy and value heads. At this stage there is a separate AI Player for each match-up.

Balancing between factions has so far been done by observing AI versus AI games. Further adjustments will be made by reference to observed results in online human vs human matches.

The only aspect of the game that did not involve any AI use is the music - the various themes were composed and recorded by Toby Ma.

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Support / contact

The intention is for IRON ARENA to be (and always remain) free to play.

It may be that, further down the line, donations will be sought to cover server costs and fund further development.

For now, if you would like to support the development of the game, please join the Iron Arena server on Discord.

You can also contact me at [email protected].