Chess in Videogames #6 - The Outlast Trials
Welcome to Chess in Videogames, the series where I discuss various interesting chess-based minigames, puzzles, and references in videogames!
The Outlast Trials includes a fully functional chess simulator where you can play against other real players in the Sleep Room (lobby). You can choose between rapid (10 | 0) and blitz (5 | 0) time controls.
Players have a rating that starts at 1000, and increases or decreases when you win or lose. Rating cannot go below 1000. Other Sleep Room minigames also have their own rating. These include arm wrestling, a Stroop test, and tennis. This game rating of course does not affect any matchmaking, as you can only play these games with the players you happen to be sharing the sleep room with at that time.
The player is rewarded with a chess themed profile icon, profile icon frame and a crown cosmetic for winning 10, 100, and 500 chess games respectively.
My favorite thing about this particular chess simulator is that, because the character model's hands actually move and physically pick up pieces, you can see inexperienced players desperately trying to make illegal moves or considering terrible blunders in real time!
To help players unfamiliar with chess, after selecting a piece, legal moves are highlighted with blue dots. In addition to this, the game highlights the previous move in yellow just like Chess.com does!
Players are able to freely promote pawns to any piece, castle, and capture en passant.
There are also posters that illustrate how the pieces move. As opposed to actual chess notation, the knight is abbreviated by "Kn" instead of "N". The queen and bishop also strangely both are on red squares, suggesting that they can attack their own square...
The Devil's Checkmate
There is a secret task called "The Devil's Checkmate". It requires you to find 4 hidden chess puzzles on blackboards in the "Disrupt the Neighborhood" and "Get Out the Vote" levels.
The rank of the correct move corresponds to part of a four-digit code that must be entered into a keypad in "Disrupt the Neighborhood" to complete the task. For example, Qh3# would give you the digit "3". The order of the digits is determined by the piece symbols around the keypad.
Puzzles
Try your hand at solving the four puzzles from the game!
All of them follow the theme of checkmate in one.
Reward for completing The Devil's Checkmate
After claiming the completed task, the chessboards in the Sleep Room change from the classic black and white to a brown wooden texture, and the material of the pieces is changed to wood.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Chess in Videogames!
Stay tuned for next week's Chess in Videogames, where we will be covering Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.