⛀ Villager Checkers
That Master-level librarian drives a hard bargain. Can they see a two-for-one shot coming?
Open any villager's trade screen and hit Play Checkers. A full board opens right there - no items, no commands, no setup. You play red and move first.
How strong are they?
A villager's trading level sets its checkers strength - and each level thinks in a genuinely different way, not just deeper:
| Villager level | Checkers strength |
|---|---|
| Novice | Walks into forced-capture traps |
| Apprentice | Sees the traps, misses the shots |
| Journeyman | Sets and finds 2-for-1 shots |
| Expert | Understands the endgame - takes the opposition |
| Master | Converts won endings; doesn't blunder |
Because capture is compulsory, checkers is a game of shots - offering a piece so the forced recapture wins more back. The ladder is built on exactly that: how far into a forced chain the villager can see. A Novice literally cannot see that its move hands you a jump. A Journeyman will set one for you.
How to play
- Click a piece, then click one of its highlighted squares.
- Capture is compulsory. When a jump is available the pieces that can take are outlined; clicking anything else flashes red.
- Multi-jumps are entered one hop at a time, with the next options highlighted and the doomed pieces faded. A chain with no branch plays itself. Right-click cancels a half-entered sequence.
- Full American/English draughts rules - including the one people forget: a man crowned mid-jump stops there instead of continuing as a king.
- Having no legal move loses. Draws come from the 40-move quiet rule and threefold repetition.
- Resign with the button, or just close the board. Walking more than 16 blocks away, the villager dying, or disconnecting abandons the game.
- No stakes, no rewards - just for fun (and bragging rights).
Under the hood
- A from-scratch pure-Java checkers engine: 32-square packed board, whole jump chains as single atomic moves, Zobrist hashing - move generation verified against published perft counts to depth 8.
- Search is negamax + alpha-beta + iterative deepening, with a per-level capture horizon that decides how much of a pending forced chain gets resolved.
- Fully server-authoritative - the server owns the game; the client only sends hop paths.
- The engine thinks on a background thread, so the server never stalls.
- Zero piece art: discs are drawn procedurally and stay crisp at any board size.
Compatibility
Plays nicely with the other Villager Games mods - the trade-screen buttons stack instead of overlapping.
Requires Fabric API. Client and server both need the mod.
