Fidchell

Philippe Schober

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this game

Fidchell, which is also called Faery Chess or Celtic Chess, is an ancient celtic game which was mentioned in multiple Irish epics and chronicles. Under the name of Gwyddbwyll it also appears in the Welsh Mabinogion and seems to have been held in peculiar reverence throughout the British Isles. Faery Chess is what emerged from Nigel Suckling's investigations and speculations about the lost game.

The game is played an a board consisting of circles and lines on which the game pieces are placed and can move along. Similar to games like the ancient abstract board game Nine Men's Morris the pieces are first placed onto the board in turn and moved afterwards once all of them have been placed. The capturing of pieces works differently though and is alike to Tafl games: a piece gets captured if a player traps it between two of his own pieces. This even grants him another move with which he may trap another one and so on.

The app features two variants of the game: the basic edition which is easier to understand and where both players are treated equally and the advanced version which has different goals for both players. The general goal is to connect the central Naval stone with the border of the board by forming a connected line of stones.

This app features both game modes for offline play against a human or the computer/AI and asynchronous online play against humans.

The app is ad supported. These ads can be permanently deactivated through an one-time In App Purchase (IAP).

Ratings and reviews

Game tends to freeze causing some unwanted and concerning issues on my device such as screen going black for a while and rendering the phone unresponsive. The game's responses to my moves are also slow and takes a while to register that I've made a move. Also, as Fidchell is a Celtic I find it odd that the AI has Anglo-Saxon names rather than Gaelic or Welsh. Due to the issues experienced, I give this only 2 stars.

Glad to see something different than Tafl, but I would love some more info in the app about the theory of the round board instead of it being a more Tafl-like game. All I've seen is a confusion of the two, so it would be cool to have some history lessons in the app, too? Hard to find details on how we know its a round board like this instead of a square grid. Loving the game so far! I'm going to want a real board soon.

Great and fluid app design. Only major criticism is the oddly Norse themed elements that seem out of place for an ancient Celtic game that existed long before the Vikings ever raided Celtic shores. AI should have names that are authentic to the Celtic peoples rather than Norse names, and the art on the board should be Insular Celtic knotwork rather than Scandinavian art. Again, it's a game that was played by Gaels and Britons (probably Gauls too), not the Norse.

What's new

Fixed a problem with challenges in the advanced game mode.