Disclaimer: I received this game for free, full disclosure on the full Review
Full Review --
Curator Site 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.
It’s pretty easy to know where the idea for Chessaria came from. In 1988 a little company known as Interplay left EA’s publishing and made their own game, Battle Chess, and pretty much was THE chess game on computers for quite a while. Not only did it play chess, but as you attacked each piece would play an animation. You could see a king pull out a pistol and shoot a piece. The rook became a rock monster and smashed a pawn into his hat, the knight would slash enemies. Every interaction was different and unique.
That became almost the gold standard in computer chess games. Not only was there a call for a good chess engine, but there also was a place for graphically beautiful chess.
Chessaria attempts to return to the time of Battle Chess, and bring back the animations and style. However, that’s not all Chessaria claims to have. They say they have a 2800+ ELO engine as well, which would be a very strong chess engine.
The first thing I noticed with Chessaria is the graphics, this is a very beautiful game especially for chess as you can see in my first look. The levels are detailed, but the core of the game still remains on the board. The game takes a more Battle Chess style to the pieces, with each piece looking more like a video game character rather than the classic designs. You, of course, have the stately king and queen, but you also have Rooks that are knights with a giant shield, Knights with a sword, and Bishops with their staffs. Each piece is well detailed.
In fact, there are actually three factions. The High Elves, the Dark Elves, and the Orcs. Each one plays the same, as this is chess, but has different looks. The High Elves and Dark Elves are more what people would expect for chess. Very similar pieces but one light and one dark in color. The orcs have more variety in style but ultimately are the same types of pieces just a radically different look for a different faction.
There’s a rather involved story between the three races that play out in the adventure mode and that’s decent, but it’s typical Tolkien fair. High Elves, and Dark Elves fight and then the Orcs show up and change the battle. It’s acceptable but it’s not going to be the big draw here, this is chess, so you’re coming to play chess.
Still, the pieces look great and are detailed. The graphics aren’t that distracting, as again this is chess, but at the same time, the level and pieces are more detailed than I expected and the levels are beautiful to look at. In addition, the game pans over the field before a battle. It’s not a necessary move but it does let you look around and see the beautiful art style.
The game also allows you to pan the camera around and zoom in and out. It doesn’t seem necessary though, I will talk about that when I talk about the adventure maps later as well. You can look at the board in different ways if that will help you. Whether it be from the side or from the enemy’s direction.
Since we have been talking about Battle Chess, the question becomes “Are there Attack animations?” and of course those are still here. When your piece captures another, a simple attack animation plays. These are rather entertaining at first, but there are two minor problems with them. With the better graphics and more going on with the board, it’s hard to make out exactly what happens in the game. If you ever played NES Battle Chess, the game brought the attack animations to a different stage that was more visible. I honestly would have been happy with that at first, because I wanted to see the animations.
However, all the attack animations are the same for each piece. The Pawn jumps up and attacks the neck of their target. The Knight flips in a somersault in the air and strikes down. Sadly once you’ve seen each piece attack once, you know what you’ll see when you attack again. It’s a shame because part of my personal love of Battle Chess was those “What will I see next” moments and that’s not here.
The attack animations become a bit much after a couple of hours and eventually, I turned them off. I’m glad that there is the option because it shows the developers are considering the best way to present their product. Overall I liked seeing the attacks, but the ability to turn it off for a little more speed and focus on the game was also worthy.
My favorite view was the version where I zoomed the view all the way out. It’s sad to say, but the piece designs did get confusing after a while. Each piece got introduced but I often confused a queen for another piece or a piece was hiding behind another. Personally, when I switched to tactical, I felt more in control of the board. Sadly there’s a problem. I turned off the attack animations and they were off, but the move animations still occurred in the tactical view. I’m used to Lichess with its fast movements so I can focus on the chess, and the movement animations don’t feel necessary in the tactical view. It’s a bit of an annoyance when playing a lot of moves because it feels like there’s a little lag necessary to move the pieces around.
There’s also a flashing red blood splatter when you’re in check that seems very over the top. It’s distracting and it makes the game feel like it’s a critical situation. When you’re in check and checking your opponent’s king is good, but it’s not the life and death the game makes it out to be.
But, overall the graphics are good. There are some changes I would have made, and I really wish the tactical view was just that but I see what they were doing and it works. Now we need to move from how the game looks to the gameplay and see if it holds up.
It’s chess, it holds up.
Ok, it’s not as simple as that, but Chess is one of the oldest games for a reason. The last major rule change was over a hundred years ago, and it is an esoteric rule where a pawn can only be promoted to pieces of the SAME color. Yeah, it is pedantic but without it, there’s a famous mate in one puzzle that works.
The point is Chess as a game is pretty much a standard at this point as long as you code the game to accept the agreed upon rules, you should be good. For the most part, Chessaria plays it straight. There’s both proper castling and en passant.
It’s when the game moves to its main mode called Adventure mode that everything gets a little more complicated. Adventure mode is made up of 100 puzzles. It progresses in a slow ramp-up of difficulty and challenge, taking the first twenty puzzles and giving challenges to teaching how each piece moves. From there, the game quickly moves to actual puzzles and they do get pretty challenging. They are broken up into sets of twenty, and honestly, the fourth set (61 to 80) was very challenging to me.
If you want to read more, you can see the full review with pictures and video at
https://kinglink-reviews.com/2018/07/03/chessaria-the-tactic.... You can also check out my Curator page at If you want to hear more from me, you can show me that by following my curator at
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