A review of chess

Since this game has been out for a while, I thought it was time to write a review.

Let's start with the combat. This is truly very shallow. A pawn, the weakest piece, can take out a queen with a single hit. This is dumb. Any game developer knows a boss fight only works if you have to use a series of attacks to wear down the enemy over time. There is no ranged combat, and no magic system. Every attack is a melee attack; you just charge your enemy and hit him and he dies instantly, with no attempt to defend himself.

The fact that the queen is the strongest piece is clever, though. Everyone knows that the queen is the one with the real power in the kingdom.

The movement is strange. Every piece moves in its own unique manner, which adds interest and complexity to combat. But the knight, the mounted warrior, is slower than the bishop, rook, or queen. Seriously? A castle can run faster than a horse? The devs should fire whoever thought that one up. And the idea of the rook moving is absurd. The rook should be a slow-moving siege tower with archers on top, not a fast-moving unit.

The starting game loop has limited variation. You just try to control the center of the board, often with more or less the same moves. The Fischer Random DLC attempts to fix this by shuffling the starting position around, but this results in starting positions that are weird and illogical. Hopefully a future patch can address this.

The skill tree does have a little variety. Pieces that level up have four different branching paths to choose from. However, this is only accessible to pawns, and the four different options are strictly limited to pieces that were already on the board at the start of the game.
And - let's be honest. Even though you have four options, everyone knows which one you're going to choose 99% of the time. And that one choice is just bizarre - you can give your king multiple queens. Just imagine the the courtroom drama and rivalry that would inspire. This would be OK if multiple queens weakened each other's abilities due to the inevitable internal conflict, but no, you can have several queens, each with full strength. At least you can only have one king.
And those four branching paths - there's only one step available on each path. Once you level up, there are no further skills to be learned.

And the king - he's such a weak, passive character, only moving one square at a time. Clearly he should be struggling to maintain his control over the kingdom, and yet, when he dies, his whole army loses instantly.

The map is a major weakness. It's perfectly flat, with no mountains, rivers, or any other notable features. There are two biomes, but they're really just the same thing with a different color scheme. There's no variety in the kind of plants or wildlife you can find. In fact, there are no plants or wildlife at all. Maybe this is intended to be a desert map, but even that isn't clear, and if it is, they could have at least added some sand dunes. The map is also pretty small.

There is no stealth mechanic. Everyone can see everything you do. The Fog of War DLC attempts to fix this, but doesn't really do a satisfactory job. There are no shadows to hide in, no cover to hide behind (other than your own pieces), and the fast-moving pieces are all assumed to have perfect vision.

This game attempts to cater to younger audiences by pretending that dead characters are only "captured". But everyone knows they've been killed and are not coming back.

All told, in its current state, I can't give it any more than three stars out of ten. Hopefully a future DLC will improve it.

I hope they release the next DLC

Yeah, adding better combat, adding a magic and stealth system, ranged weapons, all of those would make a big difference.

You're not the only player dissatisfied with this little indie game. I know this is still an early-access version of the game, but a few years have passed since the release and the developers have done nothing to patch its issues. To the ones you mentioned I would add the lack of an in-game economy, which results in an excessively abstracted playthrough, and the absence of factions, reduced to a cosmetic choice of colour and move order. This lack of features reduces the replay value of the game and the range of strategies available to the player. The pretension, surprisingly common among the playerbase, that the current openings offer enough variety is laughable and will not stand the test of time. Yet, despite all these shortcomings, I still feel some emotional attachment for this game... I hope we will one day get some sane developers to fix the issues and allow us to reach Alpha Centauri.

Yeah, it has a lot of potential, but the devs still have a lot of work to do to bring that out.

An in-game economy would be good, although you have to be careful with that to avoid people farming with alts. Factions - yeah, there is the four-player patch but that is pretty unsatisfactory.

I want this game to succeed, I really do. And I think it can. With some work, it can be one of those all-time great games that people will remember for decades. 50 years from now, there will still be people who remember playing Minecraft as a kid. Maybe they'll still play it. With some work, I think chess has the same potential.

But it needs some work to get there.

The patch that introduced the ability for pawns to move two squares on their first move was a nice quality of life change in my opinion. En passant was a very clever mechanic to keep it balanced as well.

I'm also a huge fan of the notation update. It was seriously so convoluted beforehand. Now I have a better grasp on the relevant stats.
Speaking of convolution, I wonder if they will ever address the dynamic material value. As it stands, pawns start of at 1 credit and knights at 3 credits. However, the market fluctuates depending upon team composition and map layout. Will they ever introduce something to better predict the volatility? Or is it simply a matter that I need to "git gud"?

Yeah, those were a couple well-designed patches. That gives some hope that the devs have the kind of ideas that could bring this game into its full potential.

As for the material value - "git gud" is no excuse for an awkward and clunky game mechanic. I hope they improve this.

This whole joke is too long. It has some good moments, but those are drowned in a huge wall of text.

Would it be improved by a new DLC?