Saturday 20 July 2013

The chessiest sequel ever

Frustrated with chess. Think the game needs 'fixing'. Then help is on the way. A new version of chess called 'Chess-2: The Sequel' is about to be released for the Ouya game platform. The original release of the game was in 2010 (as a card set), and this is supposed to be the first electronic form of the game.
The game can be played with a normal set, but the pieces can be given different powers. These powers are defined on a card, which you select before the game (in secret) and then reveal at the start. There are 6 cards in the set, and a players do not have to use the same cards. Therefore there are 21 different 'games' possible.
To give the designers credit, they haven't gone completely overboard with the modifications. For example the 'Nemesis' army allows pawns to move 1 space towards the enemy king (up/down, sideways or diagonal), while the queen can neither capture or be capture, except by the enemy king (it still gives check as normal btw). In fact it looks as though they have looked at various existing variants, and made a selection that doesn't leave any army too OP.
If you want to check it out before its release the rules are available for free from the developers site. However as this 'free' purchase still requires jumping through some online shopping hoops, I suggest you follow this link to boardgamegeek instead. If you click on the images section you can see pictures of the cards.
The report on the electronic game is here. Probably the best information about the game is in the comments section!

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