RPS Chess

RPS.IO Arena Rules

1. How you win

There are two ways to take the arena, and either one ends the match immediately:

• Reach King rank. Climb the whole ladder and you win on the spot.
• Be the last piece standing. Outlast everyone else.

If the ten minutes run out before either happens, the highest-ranked piece alive wins. When only two pieces remain, a Final Showdown warning fires before the endgame resolves — a deliberate cue that the match is about to be decided.

2. Your class

Before a match you pick a class: rock, paper or scissors. Your class decides exactly one thing — quick duels (see section 4). It has no effect on ordinary combat, so do not expect your class to help you in a normal capture.

Class	Beats
🪨 Rock	✂️ Scissors
📃 Paper	🪨 Rock
✂️ Scissors	📃 Paper

The comparison runs one way. Attacking with a class that loses to your opponent's is a guaranteed duel loss — there is no draw and no luck.

3. Ranks and levelling

Every piece starts as a pawn and climbs the same ladder: Pawn → Knight → Bishop → Rook → Queen → King. You gain XP from three sources: kills, orbs, and duel wins.

Rank	XP to promote
♟ Pawn	8
♞ Knight	10
Bishop	12
♜ Rook	15
♛ Queen	20
♚ King	— (you win)

Reaching Queen fires the big "Checkmate!" banner — a warning to everyone else that you are one step from winning. Reaching King ends the match instantly.

4. Combat: the core rule

What happens when you attack an occupied square depends entirely on how your rank compares to theirs. This is the single most important rule in the arena.

Attacking a piece at your rank or lower

You win outright — no duel, no uncertainty:

• If the defender is a pawn, it is eliminated.
• If the defender is anything higher than a pawn, it is knocked back down to a pawn — level reset, XP gone. It is not killed.

That second point shapes the whole game. High ranks are hard to remove. You have to grind them down a rank at a time rather than delete them in one hit. Killing a piece outright is worth 3 + its level XP.

Attacking a piece above your rank — the quick duel

If you attack something higher than you, rank does not decide it. Your class does. This triggers a quick duel, which locks both pieces into an animation for a moment and reveals both classes to the arena.

Duel result	What happens
Your class wins	You survive and gain a large XP reward. The higher piece is not killed — it is stunned for 10 seconds and cannot move. You get a short cooldown.
Your class loses	You are eliminated on the spot. The defender walks away untouched.

5. Movement and cooldowns

• Pieces move to a square you select, with a short cooldown between moves.
• Pawns can double-move — a bonus second move every 10 seconds. Practical for pawns, which are otherwise the slowest pieces.
• A piece that loses a duel or is hit by a stun is frozen in place for 10 seconds.
• You can zoom the camera in and out while you play.

6. Orbs

Orbs spawn across the map continuously. Collecting one gives you either XP or a trap item. XP is the most common by a wide margin — levelling is the game, and everything else is a detour from it.

Orb	What you get
🟡 Experience	Straight XP toward your next rank.
❓ Shuffle	Forces an enemy to swap to a class that is weak against you.
💜 Cramp	Cramps the target for 10 seconds — frozen, but undamaged. A setup, not a payoff.
🚀 Cooldown	Launches a homing rocket that locks onto the nearest enemy and stuns it.
👥 Bounty	Summons bounty hunters — allied pieces that hunt nearby enemies and farm kills for you.
💥 Explosive	A hidden mine that instantly eliminates any enemy who steps on it. The rarest orb, because it is the only unconditional kill in the arena.

Orb rates are tuned for balance and may change between updates.

7. Traps

You start every match with one of each trap, and orbs restock them.

Trap	Effect
🚀 Cooldown	A homing missile that locks onto the nearest enemy and stuns it, re-aiming as the target moves.
❓ Shuffle	Forces an enemy to switch to a class that is weak against you.
💥 Explosive	Places a hidden mine. Any enemy who steps on it is eliminated instantly.
👥 Bounty	Summons bounty hunters to hunt nearby enemies on your behalf.
💜 Cramp	Freezes the target for 10 seconds. No damage — it is there to set up a kill, not be one.

8. The fog

Fog tiles are not just visual. Standing in fog builds up a meter, and after 8 seconds the fog eliminates your piece. Some tiles are ghost tiles, which hide any piece standing on them. Fog is a genuine danger, not an inconvenience — do not park in it.

9. Online matches

• Rooms hold 2 to 64 players.
• A match begins when the room is full, or when the host starts it.
• Disconnecting mid-match eliminates your piece — the match carries on without you.
• If you reload during a live match, you rejoin where you left off.
• Empty seats are filled with bots, labelled so you know which pieces they are.

10. Proximity voice chat

In online matches in the browser you can talk to players near you. It is positional: you hear people within roughly eight tiles, at full volume within about two, and the sound fades with distance. Move closer to be heard clearly.

• There is no push-to-talk. When your mic is on, anyone in range hears you — including anything said in the background.
• You can mute individual players from the leaderboard or by tapping their name.
• Audio is peer-to-peer and never passes through the game server.
• You stop transmitting the moment your piece is eliminated.

11. Good to know

• Emotes show an animated emoji above your piece — a quick way to communicate without voice.
• The leaderboard shows live ranks and kills, and tells you who eliminated you.
• Spectating — after you are eliminated you can keep watching the surviving players.
• Custom skins apply as your piece changes rank, so your artwork evolves with you.

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