[joemi]

I highly recommend Xiangqi and Shogi. They both feel very chess-like but also very different. They're a little tricky to learn to play if you're not familiar with Chinese characters (Xiangqi) or Japanese characters (Shogi), but once you get familiar with the characters used in the games, it's easy enough.

Shogi is really neat in that captured pieces can be returned to the board by the capturer. You don't have different colored pieces, but directional pieces to show which side they belong to.

Xiangqi is my favorite of the two. To me, it feels like a better depiction of war than Chess. The equivalent of Chess's king stays in a small area, there's a river separating the two sides of the board which some pieces can't cross, there's a catapult for interesting ranged attacks. Maybe I've just grown a bit bored of Chess over all the years and Xiangqi is just relatively newer to me, but Xiangqi feels a lot more fun to play, IMO.

[mcguire]

And then there's hnefatafl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games).

[colordrops]

It has less pieces and is a faster game than chess, which makes it a more "casual" game than western chess, which could be what makes it fun.

[dragonwriter]

> It has less pieces and is a faster game than chess

Xianqi has sixteen pieces on a side just like chess; Shogi has 20 on a side.

[colordrops]

Well would you look at that, you are right. The different layout fooled me, with the pawn row being smaller. It even has the same number of different types.

[joemi]

Actually, Xiangqi has 7 types and western Chess only has 6, unless I'm counting wrong.