Acid Ape Chess

Acid Ape Studios

About this game

Acid Ape Chess is the multi-purpose chess suite aimed at the serious player.

Acid Ape Chess is organized with a tools philosophy in mind. You can leverage its modular design to perform common and less common chess-related tasks.

Acid Ape Chess focuses on:

• quality;
• elegance;
• ergonomics;
• versatility.

Some Acid Ape Chess features:

Online chess

• Play on FICS, ICC and Lichess
• Watch live online games
• View online players and their game history
• Non-disruptive in-game chat using a subwindow at the bottom of the chessboard

Chess engines

• Play against UCI or CECP chess engines
• Organize engine duels
• 3 strong builtin engines are provided (Arasan, cheng4 and Scorpio)
• Use third-party engines
• Adjust engine-specific settings
• Use custom PolyGlot (.bin) and Arena (.abk) opening books
• Use custom neural networks

Analysis

• Analyze with multiple chess engines
• Display the principal variation and stats
• Display an evaluation graph
• Display Syzygy 7-men EGTB results (uses an online service)
• Easily create, annotate and move variations with our move list editor
• Automatic analysis (apply the best move every x seconds)
• Auto annotate games using a chess engine and the endgame tablebases
• Advanced move indicators displaying engine evaluation scores

Premium access to our online database

• 210 million positions
• 3.6 million games, from the 1800s to 2023
• 270,000 OTB players, from club players to superstars
• Used by the opening explorer
• Can be used as an opening book for chess engines
• Search for players, display games, filter by ELO and opening
• Our database is updated continuously
• The perfect tools for your game preparation

PGN support

• Your played games are autosaved
• The PGN Explorer: a file manager with PGN support
• Edit your games (headers, move tree, annotations)
• Load and save PGN files
• Clipboard support
• Share your games as PGN download links

OTB chess

• Watch live games from major professional tournaments
• Search our online database for players and games
• Use a stylish fullscreen clock for your OTB games
• Play OTP (over the phone): two players on the same phone or tablet.

Electronic boards and clocks

• Drivers for the DGT Bluetooth e-Board, the DGT USB e-Board, the DGT Smart Board, the DGT Revelation II, the DGT3000 and the DGT Pi
• Play online, engine and OTB games with your physical board and clock
• Connect via Bluetooth or USB

Blindfold play

• The board and move list are hidden
• You input your moves via speech recognition
• Opponent moves are announced via speech synthesis

Tactical puzzles

• Solve 900 puzzles split into 3 levels of difficulty
• Import your own PGN puzzles

Simuls

• Challenge from 2 to 16 engine opponents
• Play blindfold simuls

A comprehensive user manual

• Explains everything about AAC, and more!
• Presented as a book, accessible from AAC
• Contains numerous use cases and tips

Extra features

• Play Chess960
• Choose from many different board and piece themes
• Enter local player details, with country flag, chess title and ELO
• Use the position editor to encode positions for playing or analysis
• Move speech recognition and synthesis
• A LCD chess clock modeled after real hardware, with sound and flag display
• Displays your personal statistics against your opponent
• Use a standalone clock app for your non-connected OTB games

This is Acid Ape Chess Standard Edition, which only provides a subset of the listed features. For the full set, see Acid Ape Chess Grandmaster Edition.

Ratings and reviews

The interface is very clean and responsive. It has a bit more resistance than some other while dragging pieces, which I enjoy because it isn't as easy to make accidental moves. The only issue I have is that it feels more like a demo for the paid version than its own app. The paid version should have more features, but it seems that basic things are locked. It is also interesting how you have to download the app to see which features are premium. The end of the description doesn't specify which.

Has a choice of three chess engines and a somewhat confusing interface compared to say Droidfish. None of the three engines is compatible with Droidfish as they use a different protocol. The free version lacks the ability to use an available collection of additional engines as well as saving a current game to resume play later. You can upgrade to add additional worthy features but its regular price is about $20 and requires about a half gig of storage space. Recommended if you can afford it.

Great interface, many options, BUT It's upsetting to be in a good position in the game, and always when you know you are about to win, to have the program show that you forfeited by disconnection. How your opponent does this??? The other issue they can leave the game and keep you waiting for their move, just to find out they left the game a minute or to ago! I even gave up on ratings, they mean nothing!

What's new

- A Lichess protocol change broke Lichess support: fixed.
- Per-engine core settings are now respected again.