Built by Antoine
Indie developer. I build chess tools I wish existed, one at a time.
Why Dark Squares exists
I kept losing calculations at the second or third move of a tactic. The pieces were all there on the physical board, but the mental board kept slipping. Most training apps at the time treated visualization as a side effect of puzzles. It is not. Visualization is a trainable skill on its own, with its own progression, and it deserves its own tool.
Dark Squares is that tool. It walks through seven levels, from square colors and coordinates to full blindfold play, and tracks where you lose the thread so you can drill exactly that.
Other chess tools I build
Dark Squares is one of three chess products I ship and maintain. They share a philosophy: small, focused, honest about what they do and what they do not.
Dark Squares
Chess visualization and blindfold training
Seven progressive levels from square colors to full blindfold games. Progressive drills, AI opponents, and tracking built around the research on chess cognition.
ChessAtlas
Chess opening repertoire builder
Import games from Lichess or Chess.com, build a structured repertoire, and train it with spaced repetition. Includes deviation analysis for the moves you keep forgetting.
OpeningScanner
Opening scanner for faster prep
Fast opening exploration tooling for players who do their own prep.
How I work
One developer, shipping production software. Every feature in Dark Squares exists because a real user asked for it or because I hit the same problem myself. Nothing is built to maximize engagement metrics or dark-pattern retention. If something is not useful for training, it does not ship.
The roadmap is transparent: fix the bugs, finish the level 6 and 7 drills, keep the free tier genuinely free, and write about what I learn along the way on the Dark Squares blog.
Get in touch
Feedback is the single most useful thing you can send me. Bug reports, feature ideas, confusions about a drill — all welcome at support@darksquares.net.