Lazy Chess

"...narrows your choices down to the best 2 possible moves per turn." I would argue against that. Within my first 5 minutes, I saw several moves available that were better than the two options provided. Opponent made several dumb moves as well, including passing over a good setup for checkmate. The UI and UX is terrible - and not because it's simple and minimal (that's actually the best part about it). It looks like some kind of phone-port with a responsive display that forces either a borderless-window or borderless-fullscreen. A third of the menu items are just redirecting you to their other, not-free, "non-profit" games. You open the game and it jumps right in without much explanation or mechanical interaction. Click the board to toggle between your two, given choices then click confirm button to select. That is the entire experience. Storepage presents the game as an opportunity to educate on advanced chess, but instead will leave you feeling like you just tossed a coin several dozen times and picked either heads-or-tails. Somehow managed to make something that sounds smart on paper feel really gross to interact with. They just threw a small, interactive experience over [url=https://stockfishchess.org]Stockfish[/url], so the development of this game might mirror the name too...

A neat idea but my core complain is that it doesn't explain *why* something was my best or 2nd best move. Adding in some explanations and information about each move as they happen would turn this from a curious toy into a really good and fun practice tool for new chess players.

Lazy Chess adds a simple but interesting restriction to chess: what if you could only make the best moves available? It uses the Stockfish engine to suggest the top moves in each position, and you must choose one of them, while trying to figure out which one is the best, since that information is not available. So, with 2 possible moves, worst case scenario you’ll play a game where you always play the 2nd best move, which is still enough to win some games. But it’s not so simple, because the AI will adjust the difficulty according to your performance. You have an ELO rating, that I think takes into consideration your wins and your best move ratio. But you can adjust the difficulty manually and add more possible moves (to a max of 4) to add extra challenge. The game also has some extra modes, like suggesting the best move and a random one, and challenges, where you start from some famous positions. I think they’re novelties, but it’s nice to have extra content. There’s also multiplayer, but I couldn’t find anyone, and only managed to play against the AI during queues. However, this concept has a big issue. If you check it against your own Stockfish, you’ll realize that some of the best moves suggested by your engine aren’t considered the best by the game. Sometimes, they aren’t even available at all! That can happen for a lot of reasons, including the depth of both engines (you can change the time limit to compute in-game), and the engine version. It’s very unreliable. I understand it’s a limitation outside the devs control, but it would be nice to have a disclaimer. It’s not necessarily the best moves possible, but the best moves considered by this version of Stockfish, within that depth. And even then, I think it can suggest different moves in the same position, because of the limited time, and especially in more complicated positions. Other than that, I also have 2 more small gripes. The first one is that you can’t turn-off this mechanic. This means you can’t use this game to play chess normally, but also that you can’t use it to play against custom positions or openings. Especially the openings. For example, I wanted to play an Italian game, and couldn’t. And even then, I’m sure the game would say the best move was to play a Spanish game instead. Oh, and I didn’t find a way to play as the black pieces, which is huge. Even if it’s there, I couldn’t find it. The second one is that this is an obvious mobile port. Some options open a white Android window, you can’t make the moves normally on the board (you cycle between them and choose one), there’re a few prompts opening other games from the devs, stuff like that. It works, don’t get me wrong, but there’s some lack of polish. Also, since there’s no Steam Cloud, it’s a mess to find where your progress is located, since it’s a weird format. But despite all these issues, I really like this concept, allowing for a more casual chess experience, and it’s perfect for short sessions. Without explanations, it may be difficult to understand why those are the best moves, so it’s not a great learning tool on its own. But it is a cheap game, even at full price. Even if you just mess with the game for a few hours, I think it’s worth it. If you like chess, then I recommend you at least check this out. And if you don’t like it, then ask for a refund.

Really buggy, too bad, a really fun idea

Remember that Penny Arcade strip where the main characters, by thinking of football in terms of video game mechanics, finally realise that it's actually a game like any other? Turns out chess is one too.

Kind of gimmicky but I love the concept, and for it´s cheap price it´s easy to recommend

This is a great game. Just needs some UI tweaks to be amazing. It's worth its money.

This is probably the best game I've played for learning and improving my chess skills as its basicaly a sim chess type of game where it will only let you do 1 of 2 moves that are sugested each turn, and you will see every turn the best 2 moves you can play. I am a beginer so I don't know if anyone else gets stuck sometimes and makes a wrong move just because you cant see the best move. Well this game gives you the best 2 moves every time. It is quite basic though but thats ok i'm not complaining it's just I like analitics and stats. online and playing with friends is great coz you can play with someone that has never played before an they will be doing the best moves so it's a lot of fun. The creator of this chess game really brought somthing to the market that I think should be more widely used and inproved apon, maybe with a second game or dlc or update. THE 2 BEST MOVES IN EVERY GAME IS ESENTIAL TO UNDERSTAND AS IT CAN HELP YOUR STRATEGIC MIND DEVELOP BETTER TACTICS. I would like to see a newer game with strategic choices i.e. a choice of opening, I love the Sicilian Defence. I have dyslexia so reading about chess and grand masters openings and stratagies is hard for me. THANKS TO THE TEAM BEHIND THIS GAME AND PLEASE MAKE A NEWER VERSION WITH OTHERWAYS OF LEARNING.

Sounds like a gimmick, like some 'idle game' that'll be fun to click through once or twice just to see the pieces move. But it's surprisingly fun. Especially on settings other than the default. If you want to play chess without either having to study it for quite a while (even just memorizing the common openings and responses would take a while) or making a lot of rookie mistakes that, IMO, just feel frustrating... This game's a pretty good way to do so. You definitively CAN lose, especially on anything other than the initial, 'easiest', setting.

BUG