Pyrenees Chess
Real chess where every piece is a Great Pyrenees: you choose which dog to send, and the dog decides where it goes.
Official site mdawg74.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (M Dawg, mdawg74), linked from its official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Pyrenees Chess
A chess variant in which every piece is a Great Pyrenees, a livestock guardian dog bred to make its own decisions. You pick which dog to send and the dog chooses the move: 75% of the time it follows its own plan, 15% of the time its second idea, and 10% of the time it sees a squirrel. Paw prints show what each dog wants, what it might do and everywhere a squirrel could take it, and you can read the other pack's plans too. The dog you sent last turn naps for a turn unless it is threatened, so you rotate the pack. Every rule is real chess, refereed by the open-source chess.js library (check, checkmate, castling, en passant, promotion, stalemate and the draw rules), so a dog never makes an illegal move, just not always the one you wanted; a Steady dogs option turns the randomness off. You can play the computer at three levels (Puppy, Good Dog and Old Guardian) or a friend on the same device, as the white pack or the badgers. Between turns the game shows 150 sourced Great Pyrenees facts. The developer, M Dawg, says the code was written with Claude and the dog art was made with an AI image model, every frame checked and picked by hand. Free in the browser on itch.io, on phone or desktop, offline once loaded, in English and Spanish; it was entered in AI Browser Game Jam 5.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe itch.io page's AI note: “The code was written with Claude (Anthropic). The dog art was made with an AI image model and every frame was checked and picked by hand.” It adds that “Hammer & Anvil Brews & Blues directed and reviewed all of it.” The image model is not named. The chess rules are refereed by the third-party chess.js library.
- DeveloperAI Browser Game Jam 5 submission, AI Tools Used: “Claude AI”. — itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai)
One HTML file with no server that works offline, per the itch.io page. The code was written with Claude; the chess rules are refereed by chess.js by Jeff Hlywa (BSD-2-Clause). The dog art came from an unnamed AI image model, with every frame checked and picked by hand, and the gallop poses were traced from Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 photographs of a running dog (public domain). The barks are real recordings from Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 and 4.0, trimmed and shared under the same licences, and the fonts (Ultra, Barlow Condensed, Oswald) are under the SIL Open Font License.
- Engine / framework
- None (JavaScript with chess.js)
- Languages
- JavaScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“The code was written with Claude (Anthropic).”Verification notes: AI use from the AI note on the itch.io page and the AI Tools Used answer (“Claude AI”) on the official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page, both re-read on 5 Nov 2026. The note says the code was written with Claude; it does not name Claude Code or a model and gives no share, so no AI code share is recorded. The dog art is from an unnamed AI image model, made before release. The credits name “Hammer & Anvil Brews & Blues” as directing and reviewing the work; how that name relates to the M Dawg account is not stated. Team size is not stated. Third-party material (chess.js, the Wikimedia Commons bark recordings, the Muybridge photographs and the fonts) is credited on the page with its licence. The itch.io page also lists the game as a submission to the Strategy Board Game Jam and to Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 2. Publication (21 Oct 2026, 03:45 UTC) and last update (1 Nov 2026, 02:30 UTC), the languages (English; Spanish, Castilian), inputs and local multiplayer for 1–2 players from the itch.io page; the itch.io rating was 5.0 from one rating on 5 Nov 2026. The build makes no calls to AI services (checked 5 Nov 2026). Jam voting was still open on 5 Nov 2026, so no placement is recorded. The game was not played.
Development history
Published on itch.io (03:45 UTC) and submitted to AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch).
AI Browser Game Jam 5 submissions close; voting was still in progress on 5 Nov 2026.
Officialitch.io (Focaccai)Last update to the itch.io page at the time of checking (02:30 UTC).
Observeditch.io
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5), no account, on phone or desktop; one HTML file that works offline. Keyboard, mouse or touch; one player against the computer or two on the same device. Optional support payments are accepted.
Not publicly available: Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pyrenees Chess by M Dawg itch.io | Store page | Oct 21, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Pyrenees Chess for AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
