ShyChess is another one of those shovelware games where I'd probably give a "meh" rating if Steam gave that option, because it MOSTLY delivers on its $2.00 promise. But having gone through it, I just can't hit that thumbs up button.
The base game, for the most part, is fine. ShyChess has 64 rooms with chessboard floors (most of which are NOT standard 8x8 chessboard size), with some pieces scattered about. Pieces don't move, so you need to navigate across the board, moving like a "one step at a time" rook (so only up, down, left or right; no moving diagonally) without getting killed. Squares that a white piece can take, or that no piece can take, are safe - but squares that a black piece can take (and aren't "protected" by a white piece being able to take) will result in your ShyGirl dying a quick (and illustrated) death. The game is actually quite easy if you take the time to meticulously map out the pieces and the safe/neutral/death squares on graph paper (or, since I'm a nerd, an Excel sheet), but still satisfying to solve. Lives are earned fairly easily as well, so mistakes aren't overly punishing.
But from here, a few things quickly detract from the experience:
- The game has a needlessly mature overlying story that has no real context around it, so it makes little sense, and along the way the background history of the ShyGirls is shown as cutscenes every 10 levels. These scenes are rife with grammatical errors. Fortunately they are all skippable, and if this was the only flaw, I would have given the game a "recommended, but only with the additional recommendation of skipping all the cutscenes".
- That said, if you're interested in the game because of the sexual content and/or gore tags, neither is significant. Enough that this shouldn't be played by kids, but not enough to sell the game as such. The major sexual content is contained within the cutscenes and is therefore skippable, while the gore comes from the picture that comes up when you make a mistake and a black piece kills your ShyGirl - there is one portrait per type of piece. And the screenshot function is broken (it is remapped as soft reset) and dialogue screens can't be hidden, so none of that art can be easily saved or cleanly viewed.
- The game has at least one error - on [spoiler]level 50[/spoiler] there is a square [spoiler](second row, third column, "C2" in Excel speak)[/spoiler] that should not be considered safe, as it can be taken by [spoiler]a distant black bishop[/spoiler] and has no white piece protecting it, but the only way to move through the level is to step on that square - which doesn't end up killing you. So it isn't game breaking, but it is sloppy design. Here's a link to a screenshot: https://twitter.com/RagnCharran/status/1048615275514363905
- Some levels are so large they cannot be seen all on the screen at once, and while I don't think there was ever a time a square could be influenced by a piece that couldn't be seen just before moving onto it, it made trying to map out the levels very annoying. Not frustrating, not difficult...but annoying.
- The final level adds an extremely frustrating new mechanic to the game, which is grossly amplified by the "cannot see the whole room" problem above. It's doable, and you get infinite lives for that room...but it's still absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I almost didn't bother.
- The extra endings are really just a chore. I find it difficult to imagine any of the three "non-optimal" endings would ever be found naturally. [Spoiler]The ending you get is dependent on how many ShyGirls make it out alive, and if you're careful and capable enough to make it through the massive final levels at all, you're going to make it with all the girls alive. Seeing the extra endings then just means deliberately killing set numbers of girls off before clearing stage 63.[/Spoiler]
So if you can tolerate (or, as I suggest, skip) the weird and gramatically messed up story, don't mind the bloody death portraits, and can forgive at least one error in the game, then yeah, I guess it's worth $2.00. But I can't recommend it, and it in no way makes me interested in the Shygirls game "Erinye" that it is supposed to be a backgrounder for.
Meh.
