Chess, Texas

At the time of writing the review I am about halfway through the game. Wanted to share what i noticed so far. Game-play- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Nothing special ☐ Okay ☐ Bad The game has multiple different styles of chess puzzles and even has you start in different scenarios. You won't just be playing a basic chess match a million times. Every opponent is a different puzzle, opening, or challenge. Graphics- ☐ Masterpiece ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Will do ☐ Bad ☐ Awful Audio ☑ Amazing ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad The soundtrack to the game is actually really fun and has songs that really set the environment for a western chess style game. Audience ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Everyone I haven't encountered anything inappropriate while playing the game so I would say its a game for all ages as long as you have a little knowledge of chess. Story- ☐ Lovely ☐ Good ☐ Average ☑ Not much of one ☐ None Not a huge story mainly just a driving force to give you a reason to adventure out into the world and rescue a family member who has been stolen by a western gang. Difficult- ☐ Just press a bunch of buttons ☐ Easy ☐ Significant brain usage ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls Grind- ☐ Nothing ☐ Only if you care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ Insanity there isn't really a grind other than there have been a few areas that appear to be optional if you want to earn additional funds to buy more items. Game Time- ☐ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☑ Depends on you 8-12 hours ish ☐ Endless depending on what difficulty you play on I would say this game has about 8-12 hours of content before you have beaten it all. After the story you have multiplayer option to play against other people whether it be in regular chess, preset alternate chess starts, or even dice chess. Price ☐ Just buy it ☑ Worth the price ☐ Wait for sale ☐ Maybe if you have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended the game definitely meets the $1 per hour mark for price to content ration that I am looking for.

Great for beginners with a fun western twist! As someone new to chess I found the game helpful and enjoyable. It taught me how each piece moves in an engaging way and I was able to complete many of the chess puzzles and matches. I also appreciate that the difficulty levels can be adjusted, making it not only great for beginners like me, but more experienced player looking for a challenge. Highly Recommend!

Playing on Challenge mode. I like the characters a lot. The chess positions are pretty unique and the items are balanced. Having fun so far!

This game makes chess fun. You play a variety of openings, puzzles, end-games, goofy positions, alternate board setups, and traditional games -- with a few extra tools to take the edge off the AI when it decides to play like Stockfish for 20 turns straight. The game gives you limited, consumable items that you can use (totally optional) to see what the engine thinks is the best move; or to encourage the AI to blunder; or to just take back a bad move and try the turn again. I'm not sure these mechanics completely solve the issue of how much your opponents' elos swing from the beginning of the game to the end... but its a fun and useful band-aid for it. Some complaints: Opponents are way harder by the last 2/3rds of the game than they started at, and it feels like the elo progression is plainly unrealistic. Chess is a life-long game. No one is going to start at 700 and end at 1600 in the course of playing a title like Chess, Texas. But that's what it feels like the difficulty curve is asking of you. And there are some bugs creeping around in here. In the non-standard board setups, I've seen the AI castle THROUGH its own pieces. And I just had the experience of playing a move, using a Hint, then taking a Mulligan... which froze my side of the board completely. I simply couldn't make another move after that and had to reset. But the bugs are few and the unrealistic difficulty curve isn't unique to Chess, Texas. It's endemic throughout the sport of chess. So its hard to be angry at a solo dev who didn't manage to crack the code that Chess.com still hasn't come to understand. Which is this: 90% of the players of this game have a 3-digit elo. But you all keep making Chess activities aimed at the upper 10%. ignoring the majority of the player base. The high-elo players acting as the keepers of the sport of Chess have an irrational (and elitist) bias telling them that 1200 is the "middle." It's not. The middle is 600. That's a statistical fact. Start serving the broader audience and more players will stick around long enough to get better. But I digress. Chess, Texas is the most fun I've had playing Chess... maybe ever. It's a challenge. It's an ego-boost. It's a good way to learn. And it's frequently funny in places you don't expect. I give it my full recommendation, especially at this price. And I hope the developer makes more like it - improving on the formula and smoothing out the rougher edges - as they go.

Fun. You don't have to be a genius. 5/5.

as a beginner at chess, this game was really accommodating and easy to get in to. i'm not usually into chess like that, but the puzzle aspects and the explanations really help with the overall enjoyment of the game. the art style is super cute and i like meeting new characters. if you like chess or just want a cute game to explore, i would definitely recommend :)!

One of the most entertaining, fun, and funny games I played! One of my favorite things is meeting the people, some of their names are a play-on-words or they just have extremely funny dialog. If you know about chess lore, you would appreciate this game a lot. I'm okay at chess but playing this game has taught me so much. I get to go around and meet all sorts of funny people and challenge them to quick matches or full on games. The game is not all chess, there are some cool world puzzles as well. I HIGHLY recommend this game if you're a seasoned chess vet or just starting out. I have put a good amount of hours on this game and I still got more to go! Definitely worth the money.

- Walk all the way back on every loss instead of restarting - Can't get items back - Cannot retry if you stalemate so you lose rewards permanently - Blanks are not always functional. Their purpose is to make the opponent make a random move, but the opponent will frequently make a very strong move, meaning you wasted an item for nothing. - 3 Move Repetition rule is not programmed, meaning draws will not happen when they would in real games - Games hints will often not be very good. Honestly can't recommend.

This is such a fun and thought-provoking game to play. I love it. I've grown up playing Pokémon my whole life, and when I saw this game, it brought back so much nostalgia with its gameplay and animation. If you want a game to practice your chess skills while also exploring the wild west, this is it. P.S I love the wild west music and the character voices :)

Criminy, I am bad at Chess... But y'know? I feel like maybe this might be the first step on my road to, uh... NOT being bad at Chess. No hand-holding like other Chess video games have (unless you want it, and you can enable it) it's just you and the game. If you blunder and die, it's your own fault; get better, win on your own or not at all. I've only played 40 minutes now, but just the first few foes kicked my butt six ways to sunday. For five dollars? It's a good little Chess-teaching tool!