Press kit
Everything here may be used freely in articles, videos and store features. Updated with each release.
Fact sheet
- Title: VIRURO — Chess Roguelike
- Developer: solo developer (Userator), Thailand
- Platforms: Android (Google Play, free; APK on the site). Windows/Steam and iOS in development.
- Release: Google Play 22 October 2026; current version 0.64.0
- Price: free. No ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts, works offline.
- Genre: roguelike / tactics on a chess base, single player, a run is 30 games (~40 minutes)
- Languages: English, Russian
- Engine: Kotlin Multiplatform + Compose, own rules engine and AI, pixel art
- Links: viruro.com · Google Play · update log
- Contact: [email protected]
Description
One line. A chess roguelike where the king is an ordinary piece and the board crumbles under your feet.
Long. VIRURO is a tactical roguelike built on chess. There is no checkmate: the king is unprotected and unremarkable, a game is won by wiping the enemy army off the board. Enemy armies grow from a couple of pawns to eighteen pieces with four queens; elite pieces and enemy traits change the rules of each fight. Stall and the tiles crack and fall, taking pieces with them; a stalemate rewinds the game and leaves a scar — three scars end the run. Between games there is a shop, a forge that hammers out gambits (two hundred of them, five active slots, four rarities, synergy tags), luck tokens and a graveyard that returns lost pieces. The Lodge of Grandmasters waits at the end of each stage: eight bosses, each breaking a rule of its own — locking your bench, hiding your setup, freezing pieces, cursing tiles. A run is thirty games across five stages; a daily run on a shared seed and “play my run” links let players compare results.
Key features. Annihilation instead of checkmate · the crumbling board · 200 gambits and a forge · 8 bosses with their own rules · a run of 30 games with a shop, graveyard and run map · daily run and shareable seeds · phone, tablet and foldable layouts · offline, no ads, no accounts.
Media
Right-click → save. Screenshots are 1080×1920 (phone), the banner is 1024×500, the icon 512×512, the GIF shows a first game as it is.
More frames and GIFs of individual scenes (boss entrances, the forge, the collapse) are on the dev page.
History
Development started in summer 2026 as a one-person project: a rules engine and AI in pure Kotlin, a simulator that plays a thousand runs on every build, pixel pieces drawn from classic silhouettes. The first public build appeared on viruro.com in September 2026; Google Play followed on 22 October 2026. Desktop (Steam) and iOS versions are planned next.