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Charles, I found these pages while searching for something to do with
Hyperchess, my first CV and a rather decent 4D spatial variant. While I was
waiting for Tony Q to post it, I designed Walkers & Jumpers, my 2nd
variant, one that is a mixed 2D-4D variant. I guess what fascinates me is
the connectivity of higher dimensions. [I read Abbott's Flatland at an
early age; subversive book, that.] Anyway, few see the beauty of even a
simple 4D dance of pieces, and far fewer actually try to play. 

I admit that I'm afraid to play Jim Aikin's Chesseract, and I find
Raumschach intimidating. They have pieces that use all the available
orthogonals and/or diagonals. I like simple pieces, to the extent that I
wrote a short article on that in the CVwiki called Diagonals, Dimensions,
and Draws, that looks at some of the problems of complexity, chaos, and
checkmate in higher D games. 

I was glad to see your venture into shortrange higher D games, hoping that
you would influence people, and get more action going in higher D games.
Lord knows my efforts have not met with overwhelming success. And your
views are more mainstream than mine; that might help. Throw in the use of
independent halves of shortrange power pieces that can combine and separate
at will, and you've got a very attractive game idea. I recently posted a
simple preset for a 6x6x6 shortrange game [lol, disappeared instantly].
While my time is limited these days, if you are willing, we can put
together a preset of your game and push pieces around in both games to
playtest them, or just play [slow] email games of both. I think running the
2 games side-by-side would be both interesting and advantageous.

Finally, I managed to get in a rather unintentional zinger from my offhand
reference to your design style with the 'Name Game' comment. Just as I
see one designer as an openings/development designer, another as piece
designer, a craftsman as artist, the power designer... you I see as someone
who designs suites of pieces both named and themed, and builds the games on
them. Sadly, I have a terrible memory, and I always get lost in your names.
So I tend to think of your variants in general as 'Name Games'. For what
it's worth, upon consideration, I figure at a CV picnic, I'd be the one
nicknamed Shorty.