Villager Checkers

That Master-level librarian drives a hard bargain. Can they see a two-for-one shot coming?

Open any villager's trade screen and hit Play Checkers. A full board opens right there - no items, no commands, no setup. You play red and move first.

How strong are they?

A villager's trading level sets its checkers strength - and each level thinks in a genuinely different way, not just deeper:

Because capture is compulsory, checkers is a game of shots - offering a piece so the forced recapture wins more back. The ladder is built on exactly that: how far into a forced chain the villager can see.

How to play

• Click a piece, then click one of its highlighted squares.
• Capture is compulsory. The pieces that can take are outlined; clicking anything else flashes red.
• Multi-jumps are entered one hop at a time; a chain with no branch plays itself. Right-click cancels.
• Full American/English draughts rules, including a man crowned mid-jump stops there.
• Having no legal move loses. Draws come from the 40-move quiet rule and threefold repetition.
• Resign with the button or close the board. Walking >16 blocks away, the villager dying, or disconnecting abandons the game.
• No stakes, no rewards - just for fun.

Under the hood

• From-scratch pure-Java engine; move generation verified against published perft counts.
• Negamax + alpha-beta + iterative deepening with a per-level capture horizon.
• Server-authoritative; the engine thinks on a background thread.
• Pieces are drawn procedurally - no sprite sheet, crisp at any size.

Compatibility

Plays nicely with the other Villager Games mods - the trade-screen buttons stack instead of overlapping. Requires Fabric API.

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2
• Fabric Loader 0.19.3+ and Fabric API
• Java 25
• Install on both client and server (works in singleplayer out of the box)