Shanghai, China – October 13, 2026 – Chess of the Hidden Gates is one of the roguelike demos playable at Steam Next Fest from October 19 to October 26, 2026. It is a roguelike deckbuilder based on Chinese mythology, and its free demo has been on Steam since early August for Windows and macOS, in 10 languages. The full game, from Shanghai studio AgentGameLab, is planned for Q4 2026.
How it plays
Every card in the hand is a xiangqi (Chinese chess) move: the horse leaps, the cannon fires over a screening piece, the pawn crosses the river and never turns back. Your strongest card, played from the wrong square, still loses. Enemies are just as open about their plans: each one marks the square it is about to hit before it strikes, so a sidestep can make the blow land on nothing. A fight is usually settled by where you are standing.
One run takes 30 to 45 minutes, short enough to finish one and still have time for the next demo in the festival. More than forty beasts from Chinese legend live on the board, each with its own story, on a board three thousand years in the making. The demo is single-player; online co-op for two to three players comes with the full game.
A myth that never finished
The game starts from the Battle of Zhuolu, the clash in Chinese legend where the Yellow Emperor defeated Chiyou with an art of war he learned from the goddess Xuannü. In the game’s telling, Chiyou was slain but his spirit would not die, so Xuannü laid out a thousand-year board to hold it: heaven and earth for the board, mountains and rivers for its squares, beasts for its pieces. The thousand years are nearly up and the seal is failing. The player is the last heir of that art, sitting down to finish a game nobody has finished.
Every enemy is a prisoner
More than forty beasts live on the board, and each one has its own reason to be there. The wolves are the grudges of soldiers who fell at Zhuolu. The foxes are a corrupted line of sacred Qingqiu. The tree blocking the path was planted to seal the board and has guarded the gate ever since. Every beast defeated unlocks its own entry in a living bestiary, written like pages from an old field journal.
Beasts can switch sides, too. Land the killing blow with a Spirit Seal and the beast becomes a card in the player’s deck; summon it later and it fights with its own health, damage and temper. There are fifty-one seals, one for nearly every creature on the board, the Nine Stars included.
Eight Gates, Nine Stars
The title plays on Qimen Dunjia, the old Chinese art of strategy and divination built around Eight Gates and Nine Stars. In the game, the Eight Gates lock the endgame away and the Nine Stars are its bosses, each Star rewriting one rule of the fight. Tianchong telegraphs its charge as a straight red line, and a single sidestep avoids it. Tianqin’s birds dive from above and force a choice between the flock and its king. Tianxin, a healer in white, mends itself and every lesser beast around it. Past the last Star waits what is left of Chiyou, along with a choice.
There is no fortune-telling in it, though. Chess of the Hidden Gates is a deckbuilder, and the cards are chess.
What is in the Next Fest demo
The full game adds two more classes (the Pawn Commander and the Cannon Adept), over 300 cards across four rarities, the remaining Stars, the final fight with Chiyou, and online co-op for two to three players on the same board.
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About AgentGameLab
AgentGameLab is an independent game studio based in Shanghai, China, and the game brand of Shanghai Yuntian Zhumeng Digital Technology Co., Ltd. The studio makes small, systems-driven games for PC and mobile. Its current project, Chess of the Hidden Gates, is a roguelike deckbuilder based on Chinese mythology and xiangqi, coming to Steam in Q4 2026. More at https://agentgamelab.com/.
Media ContactCompany Name: AgentGameLabContact Person: Media RelationsEmail: Send EmailCity: ShanghaiCountry: ChinaWebsite: https://agentgamelab.com/
