Chess in "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle"

by Shahid Ahmed
1/11/2025 – A month ago, "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" was released worldwide. Being a massive fan of the Indiana Jones franchise, this game was obviously a must-play. You must be wondering, why are we talking about a video game on a chess website? Well, the game had plenty of chess positions which were carefully curated. Unlike in "Watch Dogs", you cannot solve the positions by moving pieces, but you can certainly use your mind to solve them, or perhaps recollect where you might have probably seen it. | Game cover: Indiana Jones fandom
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I love action-adventure games - the original Tomb Raider before the reboot, the Uncharted franchise and Assassin's Creed. When it was announced that Machine Games was developing the next Indiana Jones game and that it would be published by Bethesda Softworks, I was quite excited. Knowing how much I loved the Wolfenstein games published by them, I was eagerly waiting for this game. Being a game pass subscriber since its launch, I absolutely loved the fact that this game was released on day one with Game Pass.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Review score by the critics of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle | Graphic: Bethesda

I check review scores, but I do not really read or watch any review. I feel if I want to play a game, I will play it, irrespective of what the reviewers are saying. Generally, I wait a bit to play new games because, to be honest, most of the modern-day games don't perform well on a PC on day one. This game was different, as it was quite well optimized for a Bethesda game (Bethesda games are generally buggy).

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Marshall Open Chess Tournament posters

To avoid any spoilers, I won't share any context on which part of the game this appears or what's the precursor/aftermath to this scene. That is for gamers to find out by playing the game. Now let's take a look at some positions.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Do any of the above positions look familiar?

Diagram 1

The game obviously does not tell whether it is White or Black to move. However, a careful inspection reveals it is Black to play. From a gamer's perspective, if the black pieces are on player's site, it is indubitably Black to move. From a chess player's perspective, it is Black to move as there is a forced mate in two and White to move does not make sense as he can win by capturing either the knight or bishop.

Diagram 2

The above position is certainly Black to play, as White has a checkmate threat in one move. But something seems off, and our CEO and Cofounder, IM Sagar Shah, spotted it immediately. Yes, it is indeed the position from Nigel Short's immortal king walk against Jan Timman.

This is the actual position from the Short - Timman game played in Tilburg 1991.

Diagram 3

The above position is highly unlikely to be from a practical game. Black is winning in a thousand different ways. The quickest one is checkmate in two.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The last position on the table which had...

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

...three positions on it

Diagram 4

The above position is also Black to play. It is quite possibly the longest checkmate puzzle in the game, one which is more than two-moves long.

These are the few positions and chess-related puzzles I stumbled upon in the game. There is a good possibility that there are more. For instance, my friend and I found two different positions where the in-game camera clicks changed moves and advanced the position. I found a pawn endgame and my friend found a different endgame which had a knight and bishop.

As I said to my gamer friends, taking the original Tomb Raider (not the reboot) and Uncharted concept, improving on it based mostly on melee combat and old school video game puzzles, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle shines beyond expectation. If you have a strong PC or Xbox Series X, you will enjoy it that much more as it will be visually appealing.

Official Accolades Trailer - Indiana Jones and the Great Circle | Video: Bethesda Softworks

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Topics: Chess and film, Chess and movies, video game
Shahid Ahmed is the senior coordinator and editor of ChessBase India. He enjoys covering chess tournaments and also likes to play in chess events from time to time.