A few weeks ago, when I wrote about the Hobbies of Dune, I looked around to see if anyone had tried to create Cheops and was surprised to find… nothing. Sure, there’s drawings and mockups but nothing with actual rules that you could sit down and play.

The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of creating it myself.

Canonically speaking, all we know about the game is what’s in the appendix of the original book:

Cheops: pyramid chess; nine-level chess with the double object of putting your queen at the apex and the opponent’s king in check.
‍— Terminology of the Imperium, Dune [1965]

So I took that, created a (few) board(s) with nine levels, played around with various pieces, tried to figure out how they’d interact to get to the dual win condition, and spent the last five weeks running computer simulations.

I am tired and happy and beyond excited to share with you my biggest project yet: CheopsChess.com

Is it perfect? Probably not. So if you take the time to play around with it, I’d appreciate you sharing any thoughts you might have about the game.

Anywho, I’ve done my part to make the Dune timeline happen. The next step is something I can’t do without you: make it more popular than chess. We have… what? ten thousand years to make it happen. That’s surely doable.