GAME: Really Bad Chess by Noodlecake

GENRE: Chess, puzzle, strategy

PLATFORMS: Android, iOS

Who doesn’t know of chess? Even kings 1,400 years ago played the game. The Play Store has hundreds of chess apps, all sharing the same rules that have stood the test of time. Then am I reviewing the game of chess itself ? I wouldn’t dare. I’m only reviewing a variation that sacrifices the rulebook and lends a fresh experience that, nonetheless, remains true to the classic.

The game is called Really Bad Chess, which, ironically, isn’t that bad. You play against an AI but there’s a twist — the board starts with totally random pieces on each side. Start with four queens? Why not! The rest of the rules are the same. There are 16 pieces on each side, each piece follows its expected movement and you have to checkmate the king, of which there is still only one. Despite having much stronger pieces, winning isn’t trivial. Strategising with these pieces can be quite challenging against an AI opponent that is far from easy despite its handicap.

While this may sound like blasphemy to a chess lover, it achieves something that classic chess wouldn’t have been able to as a mobile game. Imagine sudoku, which has varying difficulty ratings which people of various skills can pick accordingly. That’s what Really Bad Chess achieves — it makes chess a puzzle game where there’s something new every time. If you’re a beginner, you can get to the exciting parts within your first few games, without having to study opening strategies and bear defeat. If you’re an expert, you’ll get a new type of challenge. Your normal strategies won’t work anymore, forcing you to form new ones with the same pieces and moves you’ve known all along.

That’s not all. As you start winning games, your rank increases and your advantage decreases. There comes a rank where both players start with equally balanced pieces, like the classic. If you still manage to win, it’s now you who gets the disadvantage. The opponent AI will start getting better pieces, and you can now only rely on your learned strategies to win.

The one thing that stays constant throughout is the AI difficulty, which will not let your obvious mistakes go unpunished, even in your first match. But it also becomes predictable across matches, and you can use this when it’s you who has the handicap. As the game describes itself, it is chess without memorisation.

There are other modes as well. The daily board gives you a new arrangement every day, and the weekly board is a common board for all players in the world, with a leaderboard ranked according to the number of moves to complete the board. There aren’t many forced ads, but you can choose to watch them to get in-game Undos to fix your mistakes. VERDICT: Really Bad Chess is, in fact, a really good game that goes against the rules to make chess enjoyable to more people. It is clean, well-balanced and brilliantly simple. Having not found any complaints with the game, I rate it nine out of 10.