About CannonTales Play

How it works

CannonTales teaches Xiangqi — Chinese chess — through the one thing that makes it unlike Western chess: every piece moves in its own way, and each way is a character. The cannon only captures by leaping over a screen. The elephant can never cross the river. The horse gets "hobbled" when a piece blocks its leg. Learn the piece, and you learn the tactic.

• Board Studio — solve six tactical puzzles on a full Xiangqi board. Tap any piece to see exactly where it can go — the legal moves light up — then play the move that wins. A "Show me" button reveals the answer whenever you want it.
• Tactic Drills — a quick-fire round: read a position and pick the winning move from a short list. A hint unlocks after a first wrong try, and every answer explains the rule behind it.
• Concept kits — sixteen short multiple-choice rounds, from the board and the river to piece values, openings, checkmate, and endgames. Hints when you need them.

Meet the cast

Marshal Shuai holds the palace, Pào waits for one piece to leap, Elephant Wei guards its own half of the river, Knight Lu leaps when its leg is free, Soldier Jin grows stronger once it crosses, Chariot Che rolls down open files, and Advisor Shi never leaves the general's side. Each character behaves like the piece they are. You can read their illustrated stories over on the cast pages.

A note on the game's roots

Xiangqi (象棋) is one of the world's most-played games, with roots in China going back roughly a thousand years. We keep the traditional Chinese characters on the pieces (帥 將 車 馬 炮 象 兵) and the river that divides the board — 楚河 · 漢界, the Chu River and the Han border — because they are the game, not decoration.

Our privacy promise

CannonTales Play is free, works offline, and collects nothing. No accounts, no ads, no tracking, and no data ever leaves your device — your level, streak, and solved puzzles are saved only in this browser.

Losing is part of it

Even the strongest players miss the winning move on the way up. A wrong move here never costs you anything — it just points you to the stronger idea next time, then shows you the move that wins.

Each game's report card

How long is a game, does it usually end with a winner, and is it fair to whoever moves first? The engine played each game against itself 500 times, choosing moves at random, and counted. Random players rarely checkmate, so many games end in a draw once 120 moves pass without a capture (in mini xiangqi and janggi, also when the same position keeps coming round). These numbers describe the rules, not players.