A chess trainer that feels like a game

Disco Chess is built on the Woodpecker Method. You take a fixed set of tactics puzzles and solve all of it, then solve it again, and again. Each cycle goes faster, until the patterns turn into instinct.

The founder came to us with a first version that taught chess openings, along with the woodpecker mascot and the green palette. He wanted the app rebuilt around tactics puzzles solved in cycles. It took us a month to rework the flows and screens for phone and tablet.

We started with the apps chess players already use: Chess.com, ChessKid and a handful of puzzle trainers. Most serve puzzles as an endless feed, with no way to come back to the same set and see if you got faster.

Duolingo had the habits we wanted: a short daily session, hearts that make mistakes cost something, a streak worth protecting and a mascot that reacts to every answer. We mapped each flow, from sign-in to a finished cycle, before drawing the final screens.

The puzzle screen keeps to the essentials: the board, a clock, your hearts and a progress bar for the set. You drag a piece or tap from square to square, and the woodpecker under the board talks you through it.

Between puzzles he takes the whole screen. Five in a row earns a cheer and ten in a row earns a heart back. After three misses in a row he asks you to slow down. The last puzzle of a set closes the cycle and opens its stats.

The home screen lists the puzzle sets from easy to master, each with its current cycle, puzzles done, accuracy and time. In the stats, every cycle sits under the one before, so you can watch the third pass take a third of the time of the first.

Hearts and streaks bring people back. A mistake costs a heart, hearts refill over a few hours, and Premium removes the limit. Before anyone picks a plan, the trial screen spells out what happens today and on day seven.

The app runs on a small design system: Nunito for headings, Inter for text, a dark teal header, one green for actions and orange for streaks. The library covers buttons, forms, progress bars, the calendar, plan cards, the board and its pieces, plus an icon set.

We designed every screen for iPhone and iPad, then the App Store and Google Play screenshots. The app is live in both stores, and the Disco Chess website leads with the app's screens.