Review: Chessarama is great for logic games fans and brings innovation to chess

Chessarama is the newest production from Minimol Games, and came with a difficult, but great, proposal to portray chess in other ways to innovate the way of working with the pieces. We, from the Um Gamer, had the opportunity to try out the game. Can we say that Chessarama revolutionized chess? Find out in our review!

Basically, we have several mini-games at our disposal, all of which interact directly with the chess pieces, each with their respective power to move around the board.

These innovative modes can be played in two modes: Campaign or Battles. We'll talk about him later.

We still go back to the classic

Still, we have the option of enjoying good old chess, with classic games online.

The campaign features single player puzzles, with four different minigames. In addition to the main task, the game features one or two challenges that grant extra experience upon completion.

The difficulty was one of the most interesting points, where it wasn't bordering on impossible, but it was far from easy. It will certainly take you a good few minutes to think and test the chances until you arrive at the best possible solution and complete all the challenges.

Progression in the campaign is gradual, we must reach a certain amount of experience to block new minigames, each of which offers us between 24 and 34 phases.

Farm Life

Your first contact with the campaign will be in Farm Life, here we control a horse farmer who needs to cultivate all the land, for this, we will need to move it.

In this minigame, stepping on land that has already been plowed causes you to destroy it, returning you to the initial stage and having to cultivate it again.

Note that there is a crown in the upper-left corner, it symbolizes the challenges already mentioned. The main objective in Farm-Life is to cultivate all the land, but use the challenges as a way to increase the difficulty further, I'm sure you'll have fun.

Also, consider that the Knight's movement is the same as that of the piece in classic chess.

To make things even more difficult, another Knight appears after a few phases, and moves simultaneously with the first.

Street Soccer

Perhaps the most innovative of the modes, here we are facing chess football! Your objective is to score a goal with the pieces provided to you. As the stages go by, some cones will also appear that block our progress and require greater creativity to triumph.

To score a goal, players must pass the ball, which is possible in all spaces in which the piece can move, the same rule applies to the shot:

In this case, the ball is with the bishop located at I-5, as we cannot move the piece with the ball, I placed the rook within the movement range of this bishop to receive the pass, and then I inserted the second bishop at C-4 to receive the other pass, coming from the tower at H-4, and shoot at F-4 to score. Then, just click on the player with the ball, if everything is correct, you will see the goal happening.

Lady Ronin

We arrived at my favorite minigame, Lady Ronin! Here we control a queen, and we must fight all the pieces, to then defeat the king and win the stage.

Your queen will never be defeated, but don't think it will be easy. You will only eliminate an enemy if it is out of reach of the other pieces. For example, we cannot destroy any of the bishops in the image above, as one is defending the other.

To solve this problem, we can drag a piece when we attack them, or be dragged by it when it attacks us, changing the entire positioning of the board.

In the final stages, the enemies will have queens, which will certainly provide a greater challenge.

Dragon Slayers

Finally, we will end the campaign with Dragon Slayers, a game where we need to move some pieces to defend our pawn from a dragon's attacks until it reaches the end of the track, promotes itself to a queen and wins. This mode seemed so confusing at first, to the point where I needed to read the game manual (which is excellent!) to understand, as the tutorial wasn't enough to help with my progress since it lacks some essential explanations to beat this campaign.

Despite this unexpected difficulty, I played this mode a lot and, even though it's not my favorite, it has its charm. It follows the same principle as Lady Ronin, pieces that are within reach of another are protected, surviving the dragon's attack.

So, basically, you want to protect your pawn, but be careful not to lose the other pieces, losing them early can be missed in the end.

Unlike the campaign that offers us several single player puzzle levels, the battles (as the name suggests) are matches against an AI with several different modes. Each mode offers five difficulties: Very easy; Easy; Average; Hard; Very Hard. Except for Soccer Chess, which only has Very Easy.

Knight Supreme is a battle with just one king and several knights, your objective is to get a checkmate!

Soccer Chess is a football game with pieces, you can eliminate enemy pieces, or even lose yours.

Last Stand provides you with several queens to defeat an army of enemy pieces, destroy them all to win!

A highlight of Chessarama was the presence of collectibles within the game, the themed pieces of the minigames. Observe the pawns, bishops, knights etc. with styles reminiscent of medieval (Dragon Slayers), farmers (Farm Life), eastern (Lady Ronin) and football players (Street Soccer).

To unlock them, simply fulfill some requirements, such as completing X number of phases or challenges in that mode in the campaign.

I believed that, when finishing a set (having all the pieces of the same theme), we would release these skins to play in classic chess mode. But I was wrong, we unlocked the set to use in the classic only by completing all the challenges in that minigame inthe Battle mode.

Pros

Chessarama bet on a revolutionary way of interacting with chess pieces, and even though it was a tricky proposal, it was a great success! The game offers a good number of stages, modes and challenges, which means hours of fun are guaranteed.

All the campaign modes are interesting and fun, and as already mentioned, the difficulty is perfect, I felt challenged in most of the stages, but without that feeling of “It's impossible to get past this!”, I was racking my brains, but I managed moving forward, it was the game's highlight!

It has very intuitive manuals, when I needed to resort to one, I was able to understand and overcome the confusion I faced in Dragon Slayers.

You can access your profile with various interesting data, such as time played (overall or by mode), time for the longest puzzle to solve, etc.

Furthermore, the game has a ranking system based on XP, I found it very interesting to bring a little interaction with other players, although it does not allow adding friends or accessing these players' profiles.

Other interesting points: I didn't find any bugs, several languages are available, without having to restart the game or download any additional packages and, finally, the graphics and soundtrack are pleasant enough.

Cons

The game is not profitable in consecutive time. After 40 or 50 minutes, it is possible to feel tired of the puzzles.

The campaign's progression mode is a bit tedious, you only unlock other minigames by increasing your XP, and it forces you to repeat and play the same mode several times, becoming tiring in certain cases. On the other hand, it is an understandable proposal because it is a campaign that requires a progression system.

As far as I saw, in early access, Chessarama's only multiplayer feature is the classic match that we also find easily on various websites, and it only allows you to play against other random players. We hope to be able to play the Battles mode matches against a player, or even a friend.

Speaking of the Battles mode, it didn't really catch my attention, as the matches were only against an AI and even with its difficulty, the Campaign's puzzles were much more interesting. Of course, we release a set of skins to play in the classic when completing all the challenges in a Battles minigame, but, in my opinion, the priority in Chessarama is to bring resources and functionalities to these innovative modes that are the game's differentiator and charm. Just unlocking cosmetics for a classic match isn't what we're after.

Conclusion

Chessarama is an incredible title for logic games lovers, its proposal was well executed by the team, and it gets an 8 out of 10 in our review. Chessarama is great, but it needs to invest more in other features such as multiplayer to attract, or even retain, more players.