A new way to play an old classic is now available on mobile app stores. Chezz adds a fresh twist to the centuries-old Chess formula. There are already dozens of Chess–related apps on the mobile market, but developers QuickByte Games changed the formula just enough to make themselves stand out and better appeal to the gamers in the market.
The first thing anyone playing Chezz will notice is the modification of a major Chess rule — turns. There are no turns in Chezz. That’s right, none. Each player is free to move any of their pieces at any time without waiting for their opponent to make a move. This opens new opportunities for players to quickly move pieces out of a square as they are about to get taken by an opposing piece. This also opens the chance for pieces to intercept others during their movement phases.
Now, this may sound like absolute madness (and it is) but as they say — there’s method in the madness. Although there are no counted turns in Chezz, each individual piece is set by its own limitations. Not including the regular movement rules, each piece has a cooldown of a few seconds before it can move again. You can also upgrade each piece’s speed or cooldown by leveling up.
In addition to the speed increase, the game offers a few extra variants to spice things up. Traps like fire pits or holes will limit piece movement, lest someone loses their piece. The board is set up differently nearly every time you play, too. From the conventional Chess set up to setting the board up diagonally with half the pieces, each game of Chezz will be different from the last.
The single player adventure mode is set up in a similar fashion to other mobile games like Candy Crush. There’s a ladder of levels you can play through that challenge you in different ways. Each level rewards you with experience points and pawns that you can use to level up and play online. The game even has boss fights and different game modes like King Protect, a survival mode where you have a set time to keep your King piece alive.
The game isn’t without flaws, however. Chezz is a relatively new game on the market, and with that comes a number of bugs. Online matches can be laggy, game pieces don’t always register, and there are some long ads that play between matches.
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Growing up in a home with very few family members, I didn’t have many opportunities to get into classic board games, like Chess. As someone who grew up glued to my Nintendos, the thought of playing something manual was beyond my millennial thought process. Chezz takes everything great about tabletop Chess and gears it toward gamers. It does an excellent job at teaching players the basic rules of Chess, while also rewarding players in the same ways video games do.
The elimination of turns makes Chezz more of a strategy tactics video game than it does a reemerging of a classic board game. Matches can be finished in under a minute, which means I’ll be playing a lot more matches than I ever played of regular Chess. Its rules would never work with physical pieces, but in a digital environment, Chezz adds a whole new definition to the classic board game.
