This, believe it or not, is a chess board. Kind of.

Jürg Hassler is a cinematographer who also made this strange chess creation, along with others.

Despite certain new aspects, the basic features of the game remain the same as those of past centuries: a network of coordinates to enable strategic moves of the figures: foot soldiers, combat elephants, messengers, knights – a game with endless possibilities.

In real combat situations, the generals were relatively safely placed away from the heat of the action. Thus, Hassler starts to shape the chessboard as a terrain with one hill, with two hills, with a river. He soon abandons the strict colour differentiations in favour of other formal distinctions, so that, at the end, the network of coordinates disappears completely from the game board. The figures or players have to orient themselves differently. As a consequence of this step, the traditional chess figures placed on their squares become in part a feature of the system of orientation by themselves adopting the shape of an individual square or part thereof.

(source, other works)