Chessaria: The Tactical Adventure (Chess)
TL;DR A game of chess and chess-puzzles, with an extremely high-cliché fantasy theme. Quite engaging, highly-polished and very enjoyable.
Full Review
I discovered this title by accident, but wow… what a surprise! I quite like chess, but it does tend to be a) quite clinical and b) too difficult. This game, however, fixes that! Chessaria comes with a quick-play mode against the computer with a few chess variants (standard chess, plus some asymmetric variants and other unusual scenarios). It also has a multiplayer mode, that lets you play against friends online. And then there is the “Adventure” (the single-player campaign). The Adventure takes you on a journey through the land, and presents 100 varied and engaging chess puzzles (and the occasional full game of chess).
– Real player with 53.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Fantasy Games.
Disclaimer: I received this game for free, full disclosure on the full Review
Video Review:
On Steam I was browsing and saw someone had a game called Chessaria on a wishlist or had just purchased it. I took a look because I’m a fan of chess. Maybe not the biggest fan but I’ve played over 100 games on lichess.org (my profile page) and more elsewhere, so I know what I’m doing. Chessaria brought back memories of when I first got into computer chess and promised tactical puzzles with Chessaria: The Tactical Adventure. Alright, it had my attention.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess
Just like I remember! Fun to play, and has the option of using the 3D or 2D board. The game does in fact have a quick and easy Manual (under “Move”-“Online Manual”) that tells you how the settings work AND how to play. You just have to, from what I can tell, hold the right mouse button to access the menu options and place your mouse over the option you want to select (while still holding the right mouse button) and release and it selects it.
That aside, it seems like a fun and challenging game. I recommend it.
– Real player with 9.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Isometric Games.
The first evolution of Chess since the Persian Empire!
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Battle Chess
Simply amazing. Literally the best Chess game on Steam. Nostalgia goggles or not, I remember playing this game on my Dads old PC - an Amiga, no less - sitting up in the morning before school sneaking a few games in, sitting up at night before bed watching him play. It was a different time. A better time.
It might be old, but there are some things that never go out of style. The game offers a game of Chess in both “3D” pixelated/voxel graphics with medieval characters as playing pieces instead of figures, and a standard “2D” mode that is merely a simple top down view of a standard chess board with appropriate images for each piece. You can play hotseat/couch multiplayer, or you can pit two CPU (lovingly called I.B.M’s in this game) players against each other and watch the carnage. Back in the day, I remember sitting and waiting for minutes at a time until each CPU made a move once the was underway, but those problems are somewhat lessened now, it’s good. On higher difficulty levels the CPU does like to take its time though.
– Real player with 8.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Chess Classic Games.
This is an interesting chess game. You can select two modes: Normal or 3D chessboard. It also includes many useful features, such as save and load. Your rival can be set to a human, a computer (IBM) or a network player (Modem). But I don’t know how to set the last one.
By the way, I once thought this game was based on a sword and magic world. Until I saw that enemy king used a laser pistol to kill my soldiers…
Basic control:
Press ESC to enter the game.
Click LMB to select your chess piece and move it.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Super X Chess
An excellent game for chess variant enthusiasts.
Game play: This game sports multiple game rules and a plethora of new fairy pieces while still keeping the core of the game intact. The tutorial and the AI make learning the new rules easy and the game offers a lot of potential for improving your strategic thinking. The AI can be adjusted from easy to challenging and either side can be handicapped material. The new scenario selector offers additional opportunities for new and exciting situations to explore. There is also a list that lets you review the games you have played which is another major plus.
– Real player with 245.9 hrs in game
The music choice for this chess game is really good, and the chess is… well, chess. and what could be better?
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game
Hnefatafl
This game the most fun I can find these days (coming from an experienced hobby chess player). Different rules and game types are available for the ancient Hnefatafl game that was played in the viking area before the advent of chess. Hnefatafl is an unbalanced game where the strategy for each side is very different. One side plays the defender and must escape with the king while the attackers rush to capture him. Because of this unbalance in the rules the computers are still no match for decent human players. Try for example the mode legacy berserk and you will find yourself at the top of the food chain in no time. The number of possible moves to play increases faster than in e.g. chess and go, making it hard to calculate and predict far ahead, especially for the larger boards. Because of this complexity and the unbalance in the rules it will take time for the computers to play well leaving the arena for us humans to compete using intuition to guide us. Maybe you have what it takes to come up with a new way to play and beat the current top ranked players?
– Real player with 912.2 hrs in game
This appears to offer everything you need if you are interested in this ancient game, including all the main variants, the ability to customise the game and rules and create your own variants. online play, synchronization with with the mobile phone version, decent graphics and interface, graphical mods, and great developers who listen to feedback and strive to keep improving the game.
I suggested an interface/display change to make the game look better on my monitor and screen resolution, and with a day or two an update was released with the idea implemented. Fantastic!
– Real player with 117.4 hrs in game
Pawnbarian
I often feel like roguelike deckbuilders use a wide breadth of cards in their game to distract from the fact the core gameplay loop just isn’t all that satisfying. So, enter Pawnbarian, a game that doesn’t let you change your cards at all between characters, all you can do is add one of a few different upgrades. Strips away all the noise and gives you satisfying, thoughtful gameplay from the moment you start a run to its finish.
What it delivers is an experience that reminds me of Into the Breach, but with movement/attacks that vary from hand to hand. Calculating out the perfect route through the board to get a few pick offs and avoid damage is incredibly satisfying. Each turn feels like a tight geometric puzzle. The different characters really do feel like different beasts entirely. The titular Pawnbarian gains a lot from getting past the enemies to the final rank, the Knight Templar gets more actions by using more knights, and the Shogun uses pieces inspired by Shogi, which are often a little weaker, but he backs them up with an AoE ability he can power up by killing enemies.
– Real player with 25.8 hrs in game
I was privileged to win a copy of this early via Esty’s Misfits giveaway on Twitch (@Esty8nine) - delighted, because I was salivating over this from the ads!
The game is very much as it appears: use your moves optimally, learn opponent moves, build your army, and try not to die of Blight. It’s one of those puzzle strategy games you could open, mess around with for a bit and close again. I’ve since found the 2019 free demo, and it’s true to that- though extra time & development has gone in to make user experience satisfying.
– Real player with 14.5 hrs in game
WeaponizedChess
New Version Available 2/12/18:Windows, fully animated graphics, online multiplayer with your Steam Friends
Weaponized Chess = chess + weapons
WeaponizedChess is like regular chess but in 3-D with weapons and stealth.
WeaponizedChess is derived from regular chess but makes many changes. It adds weapons, three-dimensionality, and tunable stealth. It is a more modern version of chess. Old chess is about knights capturing kings. Modern war is not like that at all. WeaponizedChess is about stealthy, weapon-armed pieces contending on a modern battlefield. Have no fear, the basic nature of chess is retained: black-and-white checkerboard, one side moves then the other, defeating the enemy king is still the goal.
WeaponizedChess is also an experiment in creating a game where a human player will always have an advantage over the artificial-intelligence player. This is achieved by deliberately and radically increasing the exponential burden of a computer player but in a way that any human can naturally handle. Humans will always be better guessers than computers and stealth (and other features of the game) ensheathe this nature into the game. You don’t like playing chess by mail or email remotely with someone because you fear they may cheat (get advice from a chess-playing computer program)? Play this game instead. Tired of playing chess against people who have spent a lot of time building up book knowledge about chess? Play this game instead.
WeaponizedChess has an integrated board editor, a type of game notation which describes a game, a set of known popular color themes, and a set of pre-defined starting boards.
WeaponizedChess is a game for people played chess in the past but got bored with it. Did you ever look at your present position during a regular chess game and wish you could move two pieces instead of just one? In WeaponizedChess you can often move more than 1 of your pieces during your turn.
Modern conflict is heavily dependent on military technology. In WeaponizedChess there are choppers, jets, tanks, submarines, destroyers, and combat engineers whose characteristics have been translated to a chess board. Low-observable assets play a deadly game of cat and mouse with an opponent. Infantrymen use jump-packs to fly over the battlefield. Combat scuba invisibly travels under the surface to attack.
There are 2 versions available on Steam. In the Linux/SteamOS version you play against a computer opponent or against another human. Human versus human play requires both players be in the same physical room and share the computer to make moves. This version of WeaponizedChess does not provide online multi-player matchmaking. Note that a typical AI for a regular chess game is comparatively better because an army of researchers and programmers have been working for decades to achieve this result. The 2nd, newer version runs on Windows, provides fully-animated computer graphics, and allows you play a game online with your Steam friends. This version does NOT provide a computer opponent. There is only 1 package for sale. When you buy this package you get both the Windows version and the Linux/SteamOS version. If you have 45 Gigabytes and 45 minutes available you can put Linux on your Windows PC and get both the online multiplayer and AI opponent on one computer!
You might wonder “Why should I want to buy this game?” Curiosity. One reason might be because you would be interested in seeing what regular chess would be like if it was changed to include weapons. In this game you can change options to make the board pieces move very much like regular chess pieces but they will also be able to use weapons. There are many other ways to modify the game but it would take too much text to describe them all. After you modify how you want the game to play you can save your preferences. You can set the game to automatically load your preferences whenever the game starts. You can also modify and save to your preferences for how you want the game to look as opposed to how it plays. There are many videos showing what this game looks like (on YouTube) but in this Steam version there are two modifications to how the game looks. Instead of the 2 piece sets shown in the videos and web-viewable game art there are now 13 piece sets available. Also you can use a set of known “popular” color themes to change the colors of the game board and game pieces.
The AI works better if you use an i7. Both versions are strictly 64 bit. Development for this version was strictly limited to Ubuntu (the base OS for Steam development). It has been tested to run on Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 15.10. On a Steam console it is automatically hardware-accelerated. It runs in Big Picture Mode and in Desktop Mode. Use either the mouse or controller in those environments. The Windows version has been tested on Windows 10 and Windows 7.
This version of WeaponizedChess is more interested in the game being clearly displayable than in the game graphics being a spectacular example of computer animation. Those who are only interested in a game where the graphics are pure eye candy should play some other game. This game is about thinking. It is not about looking. This game is fun because you use your mind to see the pieces, to see all the possibilities. Chess has always been like that. The simple-geometric set of pieces will always be drawn quickly and clearly even if hardware acceleration is not available.
The Steam overlay cannot be used in the Linux/SteamOS version. The overlay IS present and available in the Windows vesion.
This game has been translated to many languages. The user can change the language displayed during game usage and read documentation in many languages. The game can be controlled using: English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Polish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Italian, Thai, Portuguese.
To change the display language (the language in which the commands are printed and which you read while playing the game) to English, click File- Change To Which Language. Then select English. To make this change permanent so that the game always boots to English, first click Play Change- Save Present Settings as User Preferences. This causes any changes you have made (including the change you just made to English) to be the new User Preferences. Second, click Play Change- Toggle At Start Use User-Preferences/Game-Defaults. Assuming you had not already set this toggle to user preferences, this will now cause the game to boot (whenever you DO boot) to your user preferences (and display commands in English). WeaponizedChess does not use, rely, depend on or care about your present locale. You don’t have to have locales set up on your Linux, you do not need your locale already set to your preferred language.
King Bullseye: The Chess Strike
A fun shoot em up, I quite enjoyed this game. Simple to play :)
– Real player with 6.5 hrs in game
a very frantic game, and a great warm-up to play an FPS
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Simply Chess
This is a free game, which means it doesn’t really matter whether I “recommend” it or not. So I won’t recommend it, and you’re gonna get it anyway. Everybody wins. Unless you try the multiplayer, which is a fate worse than death. But we’ll get to that.
I guess it’s a decent enough chess simulator, but there are some glaring problems that leaves it an unsatisfactory experience.
The most absurd characteristic that you’ll soon notice is that computer black never, ever - EVER! - plays the Sicilian defense, the line which is statistically the most advantageous for black. I didn’t see it once, even after beating all 100 computer levels, with hundreds of games as white (I have no idea how many, as you can’t “resign” games against the computer, and losing games that you simply exit are not counted in the statistics). The engine does love the Scandinavian defense though. Get used to seeing that.
– Real player with 68.7 hrs in game
IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THIS GAME EXISTS, THEN DO NOT WRITE A FVK1NG REVIEW!
I am only writing this review because this game does in fact deserve positive feedback. I am very disappointed at how the Steam community immediately give negative feedback to newly released games as if the game was already in its finalized form. This basically gives the developers no morale or reason to continue improving their game since the rating has already been decided by the sheer ignorance of the community.
– Real player with 51.1 hrs in game
Dota Underlords
It is with a heavy heart that I write this review, because at 217 hours of game-play at the time of writing, I have invested a lot of my time into this game. I’ve played since the first publicly available build, so feel I have enough experience to critique this and its development as time has gone on. And for anyone wondering I capped out at Lieutenant IV, hardly a rank to sniff at.
I enjoy this game, I really do, when the game goes right it hits that sweet spot so well and you come away with a shiny new rank knowing you were the best of the best in that game.
– Real player with 278.6 hrs in game
I wish I could recommend this game. I really wish I could. But I feel like Valve took an idea they didn’t create, and without properly knowing what was good about that idea took it in their own direction, which ended up ruining what I enjoyed about the game. I played entirely too much of this when it was in beta, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even when things weren’t entirely balanced. The polish Valve put on the game with the interface and coding was just miles above the competition. Perhaps its better now, but TFT wasn’t even a game when Riot released it. I feel Valve had a great head-start on the competition, but I feel they’re ruined it, and while I don’t have access to player numbers, I get the feeling those would back up my claim.
– Real player with 240.9 hrs in game