ChessXpanse

ChessXpanse

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this game

ChessXpanse™ is a game that captures the intensity of chess and pits one player against another in the midst of battle. In ChessXpanse, a player faces varying front lines as the starting positions of each game board differ.

There are six different game board sizes, the smallest is the 4 x 5 square board up through the largest 7 x 7 square board. Game boards are populated with the six traditional chess pieces in addition to three new pieces: the Mage, the Gatekeeper, and the Archer. All pieces are in close proximity to one another, and the battle is a fight to the death of the opponent’s last King (of which there can be three).

Each of the 66 battles (11 per board size) can rotate four different directions creating 244 rotations in which the battles can be served.

Ratings and reviews

It is sort of fun but the rules are horrifically overcomplicated. The gatekeeper alone is so confusing. I try to do something practice tells me I can do in a real match and I cant, nor is it well explained why the gatekeeper can jump multiple pieces without a ricochet. Without move dots you're left trying to parse the sophistry mess that is the rulebook.

It has good ideas rule-wise, but some mechanics seem too unbalanced. Also, it had problems transitioning to the next tutorial, causing me to need to go back out to the menu first. Additionally, in Tactics #1, it says to move to B1 King to capture the C2 Mage, but doing that is apparently incorrect. Instead, it seems to think the correct solution is moving the A1 Archer to capture the C3 Knight. Overall, it's okay, but there are definitely some bugs that need fixing.

Pros: Cool and fun concepts. Cons: Buggy and unpolished making the game feel like you're playing an alpha (which it probably is) Focus on bug fixing and polishing and it'll be good.

What’s new

Improved matchmaking.
Better tutorials and practice bot.
Fixed minor bugs.