Zonez Ov Kontrol is a Chess variant that takes a little inspiration from the game Go (Also known as Weiqi in Chinese). The basic idea is that instead of capturing a piece directly by occupying its square with your own piece, you capture by maneuvering your pieces to exert kontrol over squares occupied by the enemy. Each piece has its own level of control that it exerts over other squares:
I suggest taking out a physical Chess board and playing through the following in order to better see what I am going to explain below:
On an empty board, let's say there is a white rook on a1, it exerts 4 points of control over all squares in the A file and the first rank.
Now let's say a white king is on a2, then the rook's influence on the A file is reduced to just a1 and a2, but it retains its influence over the entire first rank because it still targets those squares.
Since the king and the rook are both white, for the squares that each are targeting, their levels of control are combined. So, to clarify, if the white king is on a2, then it has 6 points of control over a1, a2, a3, b1, b2, and b3. The white rook also has influence over some of these same squares (a1, because this is the square the rook is located on, and a2 and b1, because these are squares it is "targeting"). So, white is exerting a total of 10 points of control over squares a1, a2, and b1.
Let's say black has a queen on h1, what does this mean? It means that black has a total of 5 points of control over all the squares in the first rank, which is obviously higher than the white rook's 4 points.
If the white king was not exerting influence over the a1 square occupied by the rook, it would be removed from the board because the black queen's level of control is superior.
Let's say that there also exists a black knight on c2 and a black bishop on c3. This would result in the white rook being removed from the board because then black's total level of control over the a1 square would be 11.
Now, black cannot move its bishop onto b2 because white is exerting a force of 6 points of control over this square, which is more than the value of the bishop. This would be suicidal. It could only do this with sufficient support from other black pieces.
So how does checkmate work in this game? One side must exert a higher level of control over the square their opponent's king is occupying. There is no "checking", so let's say black has a rook on a8, white's king could remain on the a2 square indefinitely, unless black's queen moved to a1 (This square has black influence being exerted upon it by the black bishop and the black knight, if you recall from before). This would result in checkmate because black's rook and black's queen are each targeting the a2 square occupied by the white king, and their combined level of control is 9, higher than the white king's 6.
There is certainly more that can be said about this variant that I may have forgotten to mention, but those are the important bits, and hopefully the above instructions made gameplay clear enough. I will say that this variant certainly results in some very long games. I am considering inventing some alternate rules that should help to reduce the length of play time. Regardless, if you're looking for a new way to play Chess that requires you to look at the board in a totally new way, this might be interesting to you.