King's Gambit puts you in the shoes of a lone piece against the horde in this chess-themed roguelike

• King's Gambit has made its mobile debut after an appearance at the World Speed Chess Championship
• It sees you playing the King in a nightmare scenario as the final surviving piece
• Capture opposing pieces before they capture you, and use powerful abilities to extend your run

For whatever reason, it feels as if the chess genre has had a bit of a resurgence on mobile recently. Well, I say the chess genre, but if there's anything that stuff such as Shotgun King has been doing, it's been playing with the traditional pastime in new and interesting ways!

Cue the debut of King's Gambit at the recent Chess.com Speed Chess Championship, which is now available on iOS and Android. In King's Gambit, you take on the role of the (arguably) weakest piece, the titular King, in a nightmare scenario, trying to avoid capture as the final survivor on the board.

As you might expect, the challenge here is to avoid being captured by the other pieces while doing the same to them. There's no checkmate here, but that won't really matter as Knights, Bishops, and even simply Pawns can prove a deadly threat to you in each round.

If you come for the king...

Fortunately, King's Gambit doesn't stop there. You'll also have access to all manner of power-ups and special abilities to help you out of a tricky spot. Be that teleporting out of harm's way or wiping out all opposing pieces on the board. All of this through both missions and ranked play, with a proposed PvP mode slated to arrive sometime in the future.

While its aesthetic is a little bland for my taste, I don't deny that King's Gambit has some really intriguing mechanics on display here. The roguelike aspect, combined with the simple challenge of outlasting pieces playing by familiar rules, means that if you know anything about chess, you'll already have a firm grasp of the concept, while newbies can learn the basics of chess itself via playing.

While chess has a pretty strong presence on mobile, thanks to Chess.com, it's far from the only tabletop mainstay to make a mark there. Why not dig into our list of the best digital board games for Android to see what else is available?