Chessarama

6/10
A collection of chess-inspired games, as well as real PvP chess matches.
What is it: Minimol Games are the most prolific developers of chess-inspired games, with proper chess with different themes for the pieces, good mate-in-N mini challenges, and puzzles inspired by chess, like the Chess Knights or Unlock the King series. These were small, focused games that weren’t perfect, but served as quick, relaxing puzzles. This isn't another one of those games, but a much bigger beast, an all-in-one smorgasbord of puzzles, chessboard games, and proper chess.
There are three different game modes. Campaigns has four different puzzle games, Battles has four chess variants against AI, and Matches has proper chess matches against random online players.
I enjoyed the puzzles. Farm Life is based on the Knight Tour problem, covering the grid with one (or more) knights. Street Soccer involves setting up pieces on the board to execute a perfect chain of passes that ends in a goal. Lady Ronin is an assassination game, capture all the pieces using only one queen. And Dragon Slayer involves protecting at all times a pawn walking down a path towards the dragon’s heart. The vast majority of the levels are easy, only the last 3-5 levels require some thinking, but there are optional challenges in most levels that make them more interesting, like “score the goal with a rook”, “don’t let the dragon kill any piece”, or “finish the level in 12 moves or less”. If you enjoyed their other chess puzzle games, you’ll enjoy this as well. What I don’t like in this mode is the lack of undo, one minor mistake means restarting if you want to satisfy the challenge.
The battles are OK as random intellectual games similar to chess or checkers. They are versions of the four puzzles expanded into PvP chess variants. Knight Supreme is played with a lot of knights and one king, trying to capture the enemy king while protecting yours. Soccer Chess mixes, obviously, chess and soccer, at every turn a piece either moves itself or passes the ball according to its chess movement rules, but unlike real soccer (and like real chess), you can also capture enemy pieces to retake the ball. In Last Stand you play with a handful of queens, trying to capture all the enemy pieces. And in Pawn Mania both sides start with lots of pawns and a king, and pawns reaching the end can be promoted to a piece of your choosing, except that there are new piece types from Fairy Chess like Camel (longer L) or Alfil (2 squares away on any diagonal). Unlike the campaign puzzles which are predetermined, these are random matches, pieces are randomly placed on the board in each game. There are 5 different difficulty levels, from Easy to Very hard, which is just how dumb/smart the AI opponent is. Easy difficulty poses almost no challenge, the enemy almost never tries to attack, while Very Hard is, truly, very hard. Again, no undo, but that's more acceptable here since you can't undo in a real game of chess. And instead of mini challenges for a level, each game has its set of overall challenges, like “win at medium or higher difficulty without moving the king” or “score with a knight 6 times”. With many pieces on the board and a good AI (on the higher difficulties), these are actually challenging games that will take a lot of rounds to master.
The chess matches are OK, standard chess, 5 minutes time limit. I don’t know if there really are lots of players, or you get to play against an AI when there are no other players to play with, but I got paired very quickly, after just a few seconds of waiting. You can unlock custom chess sets for completing the other game modes, for example samurai-themed for completing all the Lady Ronin challenges. That’s good for those that care about how the pieces look, but I’d rather know what piece I’m looking at. And fortunately, when hovering over a piece you get to see its name as well as its movement patterns in a little info window.
Across all game modes you have a points system, used both to unlock cosmetics, game modes, and game features, as well as participating in leaderboards. You gain points for solving puzzles, winning battles, and winning matches. There are also daily and weekly challenges which grant you more points.
My personal overall impression is that this tries to do too much. Simple puzzle lovers may be deterred by the high price, while chess aficionados may prefer more professional chess tools that bring better QoL instead of 3D animations and luxurious fantasy sets. Probably the roguelite aspect of the battles will be the most attractive to most players on Steam. The custom EULA and cloud save may deter privacy-conscious players too. What irks me the most is that they completely abandoned their previous games in Early Release to focus on this one, leaving them incomplete and buggy.
How hard is it: The puzzles are mostly easy, only a few are hard. The battles are hard games, but you can start with the easy difficulty to learn the basics and get some intuition into winning strategies. Beating the AI at very hard difficulty is, well, very hard. As for online matches, you probably won't find grandmasters lurking in here, but you can have casual games against other casual chess enthusiasts.
How long is it: 100 puzzle levels, 4 random infinitely replayable games, and countless random PvP matches. So, infinite playtime?
Quality: Good looking, easy puzzles and innovative chess variants. The lack of undo in puzzles is bothersome. Works both with a mouse and with a controller, although selecting a spot to move on is a bit tedious when moving the selection one by one. Lots of settings, including performance, accessibility, and game speedup. Cloud saving and leaderboards but not through Steam, good achievements. Takes up a lot of disk space for such a simple game. Crashed a few times.
Worth the price: Not for the puzzles, maybe for the roguelite battles.
Most positive aspect for me: Interesting chess-based puzzles.
Most negative aspect for me: No undo.
What would make it better: Undo in puzzles, and maybe undo in battles. More difficult puzzle levels. Faster animations or instant skip.
Also consider:
Take the King, challenging chess-based puzzle game.
Other Minimol Games.
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I own most of Minimol's chess titles. Those very inexpensive mini-games were generally well thought-out, interesting and fun for the price, and some of them are actually far from "mini" in terms of content. If you're wondering if this game is for you, you can try one of those for a couple of bucks to get a taste for their games.
Chessarama is a much more ambitious title for the studio, which wraps a lot of these types of puzzles together into a more complete package with a new level of professionalism and visual design. Anyone can have fun with these, but I think it's particularly appropriate for younger players, as a lot of the puzzles are on the easier side, and the look is cute and toy-like.
Thankfully though, they've extended their formula to other more substantial modes (Battles) that expand on the puzzle themes to create what are essentially unique chess variants, and these provide more of a challenge, against AI opponents with various difficulty settings.
They've also thrown in a standard chess mode for good measure, where you can play with all the thematic boards and pieces you've unlocked (NB: it's not obvious, since chess matches have the appearance of multiplayer matchmaking, but this is a purely single-player experience; it is actually matching you with a bot, and its level is adjusted based on your W/L record; so if you want a challenging game you may have to grind for a while first).
There is a lot here and I haven't even unlocked all the modes (including daily/weekly challenges) yet.
I'm expecting great things from this studio in the future, and I hope Minimol continues adding to their chess catalog with something aimed at more adult/advanced players for their next project, but this will keep me busy for a while.

A creative take on chess. It's not difficult if you've played chess before, though I have found the soccer battle mode to be quite entertaining and somewhat difficult to sort out at times. For campaign mode you'll essentially be assigned a specific piece (or grouping of pieces) to make it through a sequence of puzzles. Battle mode takes what you've learned and applies it to a unique format on a larger scale than the puzzles. Then there are normal chess matches where you can play against other folks online. A great job by the devs and really enjoying it so far. 9/10.

The puzzles are engaging, and I am motivated to continue further. I recently unlocked the ability to play chess games and the timer forces me to think on the fly - wow, I'm rusty!

There’s one thing Russians don’t get grumpy about, and it is chess! We take chess seriously, we respect the game and those who play it. Naturally when I saw Chessarama I was weary, no not the right word here, angry! no, that does not cut it either. LIVID!!!, NO, not even that, I was genuinely intrigued as I thought of the potential and mixes of logic, challenge and fun that this game can bring and it absolutely delivers! Is it very hard? of course not, is it very simple? Not with the challenges. Is it a great game to introduce kids to chess? Absolutely positively yes! Even more so, I enjoyed it as a 40 year old without my grumpy alter ego ever waking up.
One Grumpy Russian score 9/10 – great chess based puzzle game with alternative modes and even chess pieces.
P.S.
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Abordagem super criativa do xadrez, muito divertido e desafiador.

ingenious chess games that are useful for real play but dont always feel that much like it