In the Christmas holidays of 1982/83, some six weeks before his eighth birthday,
my son Demian was recovering from the mumps. I was still very much involved in inventing
games, and at the time they happened to be Chess variants. My approach has never been to
make variants on the actual game of Chess, although
Grand Chess and
Dragonfly
are precisely that. My concern was more to invent games on the theme of 'checkmate' in its most
abstract form. This is not the subject here, but it was the context: I realized that my
strict approach posed in itself a limitation. Not that I'm against limitations:
several ridiculously large Shogi variants give evidence of what happens without them. Yet I
started wondering what a more magically inclined spirit might come up with, and there was
Demian, all ready to be magically inclined.
I should mention at this point that Demian was familiar with Chess and XiangQi
as well as several other abstract games. To keep him within limits, I suggested a 7x7
board, with seven yet to be defined pawns on the second rank, a yet to be defined
king in the middle, and six yet to be defined pieces to the left and right.
An hour or so later, Demian came up with the board and the pieces.
The scenery is Africa. The Lion is king, confined to a 3x3 area as in XiangQi.
There is this river as in XiangQi (well, almost...). There are pieces: he had set out to make
a set of 8-square leapers, pieces able to jump to 8 target squares, without being
hindered by intervening pieces. So here's a Zebra who,
by any other name, is still a knight. There's a Giraffe,
a kind of 'square knight', able to jump to the second square in 8 directions. There are
two Elephants. They unconditionally cover the first and second square rookwise,
that is: they jump to the second square without being hindered by intervening pieces. Then there's the
Crocodile, the only non-jumper, using the king's move. Finally
a real surprise: the Monkey, moving as a king, but capturing as
an 8-directional draughtsman!
There are pawns too. Demian didn't know anything about Shogi at the time, but his
Pawn and Superpawn (the
promoted version) look a lot like Shogi's silver and gold. The pawn moves and captures
straight and diagonally forward, which struck me as very logical. Once across the river, it
has the right to retreat one or two squares straight backward, without the right of capture.
Promoted, it adds the sideways squares for movement and capture, and the unconditional
right to retreat one or two squares, either straight or diagonally.
These are exeptionally strong pawns!
More surprises came: the object of the game, Demian insisted, was to
capture the opponent's Lion. Consequently, Lions may move into check:
if they do, they are simply captured and the game is over. Stalemate does not exist.
There is one exception to a Lion's confinement: it may capture the other Lion if it faces it
along a file or diagonal, with no piece in between!
This marked the end of what I considered to be an impressive presentation. And all is still present
in Congo in its final form. But at the time I had a few questions, such as the domain of the
Giraffe. Once Demian had figured out that it consisted of only 16 squares, he added the
non-capturing king's move. Another point was the river, taken from XiangQi, but not
at all equivalent, because XiangQi is played on the intersections of a square grid,
effectively preventing pieces to actually enter it. Not so in Congo. After pointing out
that only the crocodile would seem naturally inclined to appreciate such a feature, Demian
went into deep thought and emerged with the now famous drowning rule, that, especially
in combination with the facing Lions rule and the jumping Monkey, gives rise to some most peculiar tactics.
At this point the crocodile also got its additional powers in and towards the river.
Thus Congo, invented by a seven year old in little more than an hour, went on to become the second most
popular Chess variant at the games
club 'Fanatic' at Twente University, Enschede, the Netherlands. During its introduction at Fanatic one of the
members, Wim van Weezep, suggested to give the Monkey the right of multiple capture.
This idea was immediately embraced by the inventor and marks the only change in rules
the game underwent. Please play Congo and beware: a Lion and any piece (even a pawn) wins
against a bare Lion! This is very much a strategy game. Good Luck!
Congo takes pride of place on the cover of David Pritchard's
The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants
(G&P Publications, P.O. Box 20, Godalming, Surrey GU8 4YP, UK. - ISBN 0-9524142-0-1),
though in the text the roles of Monkey and Giraffe have been interchanged.
Congo ©
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Java Applet by
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