Master of Chess

This game absolutely guts me, because I'm in love with the concept and would be no less than infatuated with it if the execution was there. This game is, essentially, a combination of four different processes: playing chess games against an AI, managing your character's finances and skills (in an RPG-style point system), a tactics/evaluation puzzles and an openings database, and your character interacting with your games against the AI by providing insight/tips during the game. What disappoints me about this game is that it feels as though everything beyond playing games against the AI feels lacking or barely there. The game's steam page advertises three elements of the core gameplay experience: Improving your chess game, an intelligent AI system to improve your moves, and a management experience. I'll address all three here. 1. Improving your chess game. I honestly don't know if playing this game will help your chess. Playing against an AI is an inherent limit of a single-player game, but I played a lot of really weird games I'd never get with a human. You just see these really bizarre moves sometimes, and you look for the rationale and you can't really find one, and the program does this for a while before choosing to hang a piece. It doesn't actively think about the objectives of the opening, or general principles, or a long-term plan, so you get these games where the computer just never castles or just...acts weird? There's a tactics/evaluation minigame that you could argue would help your chess, but you're artificially limited in how often you're able to do it. I don't like the implementation, because you don't get to pick a theme and because you are required to get the puzzles right to get the skill points from them for character progression. So it's totally possible to wait a whole month in-game to get to do training, do badly in training, and get absolutely no progress that month. There's an opening study in the game, but it was bugged for me. It also seems like it requires the investment of skill points to build out an opening repertoire, which limits how well you can actually use it to study. You get an option to see an eval bar while you play (maybe gated behind difficulty level?). Maybe this helps your chess by seeing when you played a bad move, or when your opponent hung a piece? But this is something you could have access to for free playing against any bot on multiple free chess sites. 2. An intelligent AI system to improve your moves. Your character's avatar can give you hints during these games. Essentially, you can have him/her either suggest a move or evaluate a move you want to play (I think maybe on a difficulty I didn't play at he gives you a list of candidate moves too, idk). I think the intent behind this was that your avatar would give you a hint, then you'd have a lightbulb moment and consider a new idea, and you'd improve your chess that way maybe? The implementation of this is actually really rough though because when you get a move recommended to you your character *doesn't give you the line he's calculating*. I think that's actually such a tragic implementation. Because from what I've read, the recommendations of your character are *based on his skill level*. So if you're a beginner player, don't know what to do, and ask your character for help, you have to first wonder whether your character is purposely giving you a bad move to simulate being bad at the game, THEN get recommended a move that might be a weird computer move with logic that isn't immediately evident, and THEN you aren't given the line your character thought through. So you either are good enough at chess to figure out the logic of the move the AI recommended, if there is one, or you aren't and you can't figure out the context or the intended idea behind the move because you aren't provided with the line. I have no idea why this is implemented this way, because no chess player comes up with what they think the best move is without calculating what happens after the move is played. In real life, you would either have a specific tactical sequence in mind, or you'd be able to generally justify the move with some kind of rationale. "This develops my piece" or "this preemptively removes a pin" or something. Every chess evaluation software already provides lines when suggesting the best moves. There's an optional way to play where you don't play the full game, but instead just play critical moments. The natural extension of this weird implementation is you get to a critical moment, you play whatever your avatar says is the best weird computer move, and then immediately after the program decides its another critical moment and you're left having to ask the avatar again because you don't understand the move. Getting hints in-game costs energy. Getting an evaluation of your move also costs energy. But I found in my games the cost of asking about a move and then playing it was the same as just playing the moves without any assistance, which means you're actively punished for not using AI assistance. 3. A management experience. There's barely anything to manage. I've played fairly simple management games like Recettear or This Is The Police. I've played super in-depth management games like Rule The Waves and Gear City. There's almost nothing here. You manage your character's stats by paying for one-off training sessions (when the game lets you, when you're prompted) or by picking whatever coach you can afford (and the game lets you pick based on your elo) which lets you do puzzle training for stat points once a month and nothing else really. You keep your character from getting depressed by playing tournaments, because they get depressed if they don't play chess often enough and the only chess that counts is playing in competitive tournaments. You pick what tournaments you want to play. You get money from tournaments to pay your coach. There's not any real choices there. Management without choices or meaningful opportunity costs is just tedium. Why bother with budgeting my finances if there's barely anything to spend money on? Why can't I choose to pay extra to have more intensive training sessions with my coach? Why can't I buy opening courses and spend self-study time learning the Queen's Gambit? You aren't budgeting to afford plane tickets and hotels and stuff to play these different tournaments. The only thing you're really managing is whether you have enough money to play a tournament before your guy gets depressed. The RPG element is bare-bones. You get skill points based on your training with a coach. You allocate them into three areas, which influences how often your avatar tells you to play the wrong move and how many moves he can remember from his opening study. I played for four hours. I encountered four bugs and one crash. I feel like that's reasonable for an early access title, but unacceptable for a full release. There's no music outside the menu music. What's really vexing for me is how little actual game there is here. You aren't paying for an opening builder (the dev sells one for free). You aren't paying to play an AI with an eval bar or get tactics/eval training (available on major chess sites for free). The chess engine (Lizard) is open-source. I think it's a cop-out to give the value proposition a pass because its a solo dev or small team. Braid, Hollow Knight, and Stardew Valley are 15 dollars. Undertale is 10. When you evaluate the value-add the game provides over free resources, I feel like the game doesn't offer enough to ask 20 dollars. I would support this as an early access proof-of-concept, but not as a full release. If you're interested, try the demo (like I didn't). Otherwise you'll play two games of chess in classical time controls and exceed your refund window before evaluating whether the actual game element is too bare-bones for you to enjoy investing your time into.

First of all, I should say that I liked the game, but there are many things that could be improved. 1- There is no date filter in the tournament section filters. A date filter should definitely be added, and we should be able to filter by date. 2- During a match, there is an option to simulate the rest of the game, but this option sometimes works very poorly. Let me give an example: when this happened, I was a 2100-rated player and my opponent was rated 2300. According to the game’s logic, my opponent is a better player than me, and judging by our ratings this is not unreasonable. However, I simulated a position where I had one pawn in a king and rook endgame, while my opponent had no pawns. The position was completely drawn, but as a result of the simulation, my opponent won the game. Realistically speaking, a 2100-rated player would never, ever lose a rook endgame when the opponent has no pawns and you are a pawn up. After this happened, my motivation to play the game honestly dropped. 3- This sounds like a joke, but unfortunately it is real. The game does not have the threefold repetition draw rule. Honestly, other problems can be understandable to some extent, but in a game that is completely focused on chess, it is truly surprising that such a fundamental chess rule is missing. Let me also describe another situation I experienced. In the same game from the previous example, when my opponent had only a rook and a king (and I had a rook, a king, and one pawn), I offered a draw. My opponent did not accept the offer in a completely drawn position. Then I repeated moves three times, but the game still did not end in a draw. It was a truly frustrating moment. When I wrote this review, I had played the game for 11 hours. I am sure that as I play more, I will find more things to add, and I may update this review later. In short, the feeling of being a real chess player, which is what the game aims to deliver, is really nice, but there are many points that can be improved. If you want to play the game with little knowledge of chess, the game seems quite helpful, so there is no need to hesitate by saying “I don’t know how to play.” However, if you are not truly passionate about chess, it is questionable how much enjoyment you will get from the game. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TÜRKÇE HALİ En başta söylemeliyim ki oyunu beğendim ama gelişebilecek çok fazla şey var. 1- Turnuvalar kısmının filtrelerinde tarih filtresi yok, oraya kesinlikle tarih eklenmeli ve tarihe göre filtreleme yapabilmeliyiz. 2- Maç sırasında oyunun kalanını simüle etme seçeneği var fakat bu seçenek bazen çok kötü çalışıyor, bir örnek vereyim: Bu yaşandığında 2100 ratingli bir oyuncuyum ve karşımda 2300 olan bir oyuncu var. Oyunun mantığına göre karşımdaki oyuncu benden daha iyi bir oyuncu ve ratingimize bakılırsa haksız sayılmaz fakat şah + kale oyun sonunda 1 piyonum varken rakibimin de hiç piyonu yokken oyunu simüle ettim. Konum tamamen berabereydi fakat simülasyon sonucunda rakibim oyunu kazandı. Gerçekçi düşünürsek 2100 ratingli bir oyuncu kale oyun sonunda rakibin piyonu yokken ve 1 piyon öndeyken oyunu asla ama asla kaybetmez. Bu olduktan sonra oyuna karşı hevesim kırıldı açıkçası. 3- Şaka gibi ama maalesef gerçek. Oyunda 3 hamle tekrarından dolayı beraberlik kuralı yok. Açıkçası diğer tüm sorunlar bir noktada anlaşılabilir ama tamamen satranca odaklanan bir oyunda bir satranç kuralı nasıl olmaz gerçekten hayret verici. Yine başıma gelen bir olayı yazayım. Az önce verdiğim örnekteki oyunda rakibin sadece kale ve şahı varken (benim de kale, şah ve 1 tane piyonum var) rakibe beraberlik teklif ediyorum, adam tamamen berabere pozisyonda teklifi kabul etmiyor, 3 hamle tekrarı yapıyorum, oyun berabere bitmiyor. Gerçekten sinir bozucu bir andı. Bu incelemeyi yazdığımda oyunu 11 saat oynamıştım, eminim daha fazla oynadıkça ekleyecek şeyler çıkacaktır, belki güncelleme yaparım sonrasında. Uzun lafın kısası, oyunun odaklandığı gerçek bir satranç oyuncusu olma hissiyatı gerçekten güzel fakat geliştirilebilecek çok fazla nokta var. Eğer satrancı az bilerek oyunu oynamak istiyorsanız gördüğüm kadarıyla oyun size oldukça yardımcı oluyor, o yüzden ben oynamayı bilmiyorum diyerek çekinmenize gerek yok fakat gerçekten satranç için tutkulu değilseniz oyundan ne kadar keyif alabilirsiniz orası da muamma.

I like the idea and I appreciate the effort made by the developer. But you pay full price and have to deal with crashes and various bugs. A crash in this game means that you have probably lost your progress and the games you played will not count. And that is very disappointing. More than that, it seems like the dev switched his focus to the other game he is developing.

For amateur chess players, this game is an unpretentious and entertaining simulation that offers great variety. I like it.

I think it had promise originally for the concept, but didn't really seem to deliver. As another reviewer mentioned this doesn't feel like it'll improve your game, in fact to some extent it might make it worse. The dev (as is his right) seems to have pretty much moved off of it so I think its current state is pretty much what you can expect.

国际象棋题材+模拟养成的框架很有吸引力，体验从象棋新人一路成长为棋王的养成，但实际游玩体验比较平庸。有一篇英文长评总结得很好：游戏深度严重不足。 对弈玩法方面，角色设有战略、战术、残局三项核心属性，直接决定自动对弈的落子精准度。游戏提供三种对局模式：1. 全程手动落子；2. 平时AI下，系统认为的关键步由玩家抉择；3. 全程 AI 自动模拟：通过属性模拟胜率直接获取结果。 对局中玩家可消耗能量获取AI提示，但提示不会讲解背后逻辑与延伸思路，新手玩家很难借此提升棋力。而同时 AI 自动行棋的棋招很奇怪，常会走出莫名其妙的离谱错招，比如无故动王直接丧失易位权。有时玩家关键步落子完，AI 却会跟出一步废棋。我有一把残局拖到 89 回合，最后对手AI思考时游戏卡死了。 在模拟养成与经营维度上，整体管理所需的决策点不多，玩家可消耗资金参加锦标赛、或者聘请教练事件提升属性点数。至于开局库还需要玩家录入棋路，操作繁琐，甚至不如自己背谱下方便。 总而言之，这款游戏既没法帮助想学棋的玩家精进棋力，单薄的养成机制也满足不了玩家角色扮演的需求。游戏体验平平，汉化部分也有很多BUG，仅算勉强一试。

Great concept and could be exactly my kind of game. Sadly, the AI is awful, which is a pretty big problem in a chess game. I keep seeing moves from opponents, and sometimes from my own character in certain modes, that make absolutely no sense. Good idea, poor execution. Fix the AI and this could be really good. Right now it is hard to take seriously.

freeze ALL the time

Live your dream of quitting your job and becoming a professional chess player. Realize how bad you are. Gradually get kind of better.

As a chess noob i think this game is fun, but it would have been a thousand times better for me if the tips you get were leading you more into a good move. Instead of "This move i think moving a pawn is the best" I would rather have a tip say "This move i think moving a pawn into a posision where it defends a major piece" Or "This move i think moving the queen into a posision where it attacks an enemy major piece and defends one of our own pieces"