Samayukai Chess, which went live on 21 October, asks a simple question of every player who sits down to it: who is holding your reins?
A game that grew out of a story
Samayukai did not begin as a game. It began as a saga.
Author Anaiah, a psychologist, spent years building the Samayukai universe, a six-book mythological fantasy that draws on the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Puranas. Its world is shaped by the five elements, the pancha bhutas, and by the legend of Parashurama's axe, broken into fragments that become the weapons of five keepers across five realms.
The deeper the story went, the clearer it became that its world was built on strategy: choosing when to strike, when to wait and what to give up. That logic eventually found a board of its own. Samayukai Chess is the saga's thinking made playable.
Why the queen had to go
In classical chess, the queen is the piece you lean on. When things go wrong, she comes to the rescue.
Samayukai removes her, along with two other pieces chess players have relied on for centuries, and introduces new ones in their place. It is played on a 9×9 board with a lotus at its centre. There are no opening books and no memorised lines to fall back on. Every player, whether a beginner or a titled player, starts on the same ground.
That is the point. Without the familiar crutches, memory gives way to judgement. The game stops asking what you know and starts asking how you see.
The mind as the real board
Indian philosophy has long held that the mind can be trained, and that training it is a practice rather than a gift. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of the sthitaprajna, the person of steady wisdom, who stays even-minded in gain and loss. Patanjali's Yoga Sutras name two disciplines for the restless mind: abhyasa, steady practice, and vairagya, letting go of attachment.
Samayukai Chess is built around those same disciplines. Viveka, the ability to tell what matters from what only looks important, decides most games. Patience matters more than aggression. A lost piece has to be let go without panic, because clinging to a plan the board has already refuted is how players lose.
No board game will turn anyone into a sage, and Samayukai does not claim to raise intelligence. What it does offer is an hour of practice in the habits the ancients prized: attention that does not wander, foresight that holds several threats in view at once, and calm when the position turns against you. Those are skills worth having off the board too.
In the creator's words
“The old texts never treated the mind as fixed. They treated it as something you could steady, sharpen and set free. I wanted a game that works on that idea. When the queen leaves the chess board, you stop playing from memory and start playing from awareness. That is where real growth begins.” — Anaiah, creator of Samayukai
Play free, starting today
Samayukai Chess is live at samayukai.com, with nothing to download and nothing to pay. The classic checkmate mode is open now. Two further modes, Lotus Hold and Element Hunt, are coming soon, each adding a new way to win and a new way to lose.
The ancients said that the person who conquers the mind conquers the world. Samayukai offers a smaller and more modest start: 81 squares, a lotus at the centre, and no queen to save you.
Join the Keepers
In the saga, a keeper is someone entrusted with something sacred: a weapon, a memory, a truth that must not be lost. Keepers do not wait to be told what is coming. They see the next seal break before anyone else.
Samayukai now invites its players and readers to become keepers too. Joining takes a minute at samayukai.com. Each new keeper chooses a house among the five elements, Water, Air, Earth, Fire or Sky, and becomes part of the circle that hears first. Keepers get the first look at each new weapon as it is revealed, hidden clues from the saga, and early access as new modes like Lotus Hold and Element Hunt open on the board.
The first 1,000 to join will be numbered as Founding Keepers. When those places are filled, they are gone.
There is something fitting in that. The old traditions never asked a seeker to stand alone; they gave the seeker a lineage. The Keepers are Samayukai's lineage, a community of people who would rather sharpen the mind than simply pass the time.
About Samayukai
Samayukai is a mythological fantasy universe created by author Anaiah and inspired by India's ancient scriptures. The six-book saga begins with Sesha: the Serpent of the Axe. Samayukai Chess is its companion strategy game, designed to train focus, foresight and composure through play. Readers and players can join the Keepers, the saga's community, at samayukai.com.
Website: samayukai.com Instagram: @Anaiah.writes
