The Humble Checkmate! Chess Games Collection bundles 11 chess-variant games for $12 — and at least four of them are genuinely worth buying at full price. Claim it before April 16. The standout: 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, which has 7,898 reviews at 97% positive and normally goes for $11.99 on Steam. You’re basically getting that game for free and 10 others thrown in.
Total retail value if you bought every game separately: $130.89. Humble’s asking $12 minimum, suggested $25. That’s a straight $106 in savings at minimum.
What’s In the Bundle
All 11 games unlock at $12. No tiers, no “pay more for the good ones.” Rare for Humble these days — most bundles make you spend $20+ for the headliners. Here, every game is in from the start.
The full list, with current Steam review scores:
- 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel ($11.99) — Overwhelmingly Positive, 97% of 7,898 reviews
- Pawnbarian ($9.99) — Very Positive, 92% of 436 reviews
- Chessarama ($14.99) — Very Positive, 92% of 115 reviews
- Gambit Shifter ($7.99) — Very Positive, 98% of 56 reviews
- The Rookery ($9.99) — Very Positive, 95% of 74 reviews
- The Ouroboros King ($9.99) — Very Positive, 82% of 436 reviews
- WizardChess ($14.99) — Very Positive, 87% of 52 reviews
- Below the Crown ($14.99) — Positive, 94% of 32 reviews
- Chess Ultra ($12.99) — Mostly Positive, 77% of 1,777 reviews
- Dark Chess ($12.99) — Mostly Positive, 79% of 150 reviews
- Usurper ($9.99) — Positive, 81% of 32 reviews
Charity this time is World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit that deploys restaurant kitchens to disaster zones. Standard Humble stuff — part of your purchase goes to them.
The Four Games Worth Your Time
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel — The Instant Claim
This one launched in 2020 and has never been this cheap. You can move chess pieces backward through time, creating branching parallel timelines. Your opponent has to address threats across multiple versions of the board simultaneously. It sounds like a joke but it’s a fully realized chess variant with an active online community and tournament play.
97% positive across nearly 8,000 Steam reviews is not a game getting a pass for novelty. People are playing it seriously. Normal price $11.99 — at $12 for the whole bundle, you’re essentially paying for this one game and getting 10 more free.
Pawnbarian — Best if You Like Slay the Spire
Pawnbarian is a roguelike deckbuilder where you move your hero through dungeons using chess movement cards. Every card is a chess piece — a Knight card lets you jump in an L-shape, a Bishop card moves diagonally. The dungeons are tiny (5×5 grids), runs take 20-30 minutes, and it stacks up well against other mobile-style roguelites in this price range.
92% positive across 436 reviews. It’s a small game — $9.99 is honestly the right price for it — but the design is clean and runs hold up well for quick sessions.
The Ouroboros King — Full Chess Roguelike
Most chess variants in this bundle swap out standard rules for something weird. The Ouroboros King takes the opposite approach: keep actual chess mechanics, add RPG progression and permadeath. You build a chess army across a roguelike campaign. Pieces level up. You recruit new units. When your king falls, the run ends.
82% positive across 436 reviews. It’s deeper than it looks — if you want chess that plays like a campaign RPG, this is the one. Developer Lionhart Games put serious design work into the progression system.
Gambit Shifter — The Surprise Pick
98% positive on 56 reviews — the highest score in the bundle. Gambit Shifter is an abstract strategy puzzle game built on chess movement rules, developed by one person. It’s new (2023), barely reviewed, and quietly excellent. At $7.99 normally, it’s the underdog of this bundle. If you like figuring out movement puzzles without hand-holding, start here.
What’s Skippable
Chess Ultra ($12.99 retail) is the “nice looking chess simulator” in the bundle — 4K visuals, grandmaster AI, VR support. The 77% positive rating (1,777 reviews) reflects a real complaint: the AI difficulty jumps are uneven, and the online population is thin. Fine if you want a visually polished chess app, but not a reason to buy this bundle.
WizardChess and Dark Chess are interesting concepts — WizardChess adds spells, Dark Chess limits visibility like fog of war — but both have small review counts and “good but shallow” feedback. Worth trying at $0 extra cost; not worth buying alone.
Usurper (81% positive, 32 reviews) is a newer roguelike deckbuilder where your king is your primary weapon. Concept is solid, but it’s early enough in its review count that the score could shift. Developer Rogue Brain Studios hasn’t shipped a major title before. Keep expectations in check.
Below the Crown and The Rookery are both interesting but thin — The Rookery (95% positive) is an atmospheric chess narrative game with only 74 reviews, below the crown is an RPG-chess hybrid with 94% positive across only 32 reviews. Low review counts mean small audience, which usually means short game. Fine for the price, but temper expectations on runtime.
Is the Bundle Worth It?
Yes, at $12. Here’s the math:
- 5D Chess alone: $11.99 on Steam right now
- Pawnbarian alone: $9.99 on Steam right now
- Add the 9 others: $108.91 at retail
- Bundle minimum: $12.00
If you have zero interest in chess variants and don’t like roguelikes, skip it. But if either genre appeals to you, $12 for this specific collection is an unusually clean value. The roguelite-chess overlap here — Pawnbarian, Ouroboros King, Gambit Shifter, Usurper — means you’re essentially getting a themed genre sampler for the price of one mid-tier indie.
The bundle closes April 16, 2026. You can pay the suggested $25 if you want to send more to World Central Kitchen — that’s what Humble’s optimizing for — but the $12 minimum gets everything.
Grab it at humblebundle.com.
More Cheap Gaming Deals
If you’re hunting value elsewhere this week, the Humble Choice March 2026 has Tempest Rising and Chants of Sennaar for subscribers at $14.99/month. For free options, Castlevania Anniversary Collection hits Epic for free on March 30 — that’s 8 classic games at $0. And if you want a bigger RPG to sink time into, Xbox Game Pass March Wave 2 just added Disco Elysium and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
