Zugkai
A focus timer where your squad fights while you work
Start a 25 or 50 minute session and get on with your work. A team of chess fighters holds the line while the timer runs, and you come back to what they won.
Free in the browser · no sign-up needed
How a session goes
Start a timer
Pick 25 or 50 minutes and, if you like, say what you are working on.
Do your work
Your squad fights at its camp while the timer runs. They play real chess puzzles; you do not have to watch.
Come back on the break
See what they won, level them up, recruit someone new, then go again.
The squad
Recruit fighters with what your sessions earn. Each one plays the part of a chess piece: knights strike, rooks hold, bishops support.
KaedeTactician
ReginaThe Black Queen
Sister NullOracle of the Diagonal Net
VexChrome Rider
LunaOrbital Marksman
JunoSignal Operator
What it is built around
- Focus minutes are the currency
- Shards, experience and recruits all come from finished sessions. Leaving the tab open without a session pays a tenth.
- A work log, not a streak trap
- Every session is logged with what you said you were doing, so the week adds up to something you can read.
- A story that opens as you go
- It is 2070 on Caïssa Station. Each new area you reach plays a short chapter, with a chess puzzle or two inside it.
- A timer that follows you
- Pop the timer out over your work, or attach it to a study stream with the browser extension.