As board games go, it’s hard to get more influential than chess. It’s not the oldest game out there, Go is more than a millennium older, but Chess still predates Monopoly by roughly five centuries. Many games have taken important lessons from it across the ages. We even made a list of some of our favorite chess-like board games. The latest in the long line of titles shaped by Chess is Queen Alice, a Lewis Carroll-inspired game of tactical coronation-preparation beyond the looking glass.
Neither of the players engaged in this game actually controls the titular Queen Alice. Instead, you’re both put in charge of competing color coded court factions. One red, and one white.
The center of the game area is dominated by a chessboard. During each turn, you’ll move one of your pieces across this grid, following the same movement rules used in chess (bishops move diagonally, knights jump around in L shapes, etc). Rather than just navigating the board in order to attack your opponent, instead you’ll be maneuvering your pieces to activate the effects of different squares on the board.
Every row of the chessboard corresponds to a different type of resource, while every column corresponds to a mini game. The resources that you earn can be spent in order to advance in these mini games, and whoever performs the best in these games earns Alice’s favor. Whoever Alice favors the most wins when she is crowned the queen of Wonderland at the end of the game.
That’s a fairly brief rundown of the game’s central systems (there’s a lot to this one). If you’re looking to dive a bit deeper, you can check out this rules video.
Queen Alice is currently crowdfunding on Gamefound. $56 (£42) will get you a copy of the base game. An upgraded edition, featuring deluxe wooden components, is available for $68 (£51).
If you’re looking for an adventure, the Wargamer Discord server is like a Wonderland for tabletop fans of all kinds. Or, you can have a look at our guide to the best board games in 2026.
Source: Wargamer
