Chess Games

Graphics 3/5

It’s strictly functional, as it’s meant not to distract you from the game. The load picture looks like it’s created in Paint in one minute. Then it comes to previewing the other games, their Google Play pages, screenshots and descriptions, so there’s little left to the app we review itself. And so, there isn’t much to rate or discuss.

Gameplay 4/5

The app’s mission is in providing you most chess apps, with descriptions, previews and direct links to Google Play pages. And that’s what it really offers.

There’s a lot to select from: 3D games, online chess, hot seat apps, apps for playing online, chess problems and studies, even OCR tools for scanning chess diagrams and opening them in popular analytic apps! The selection seems great (even though no new apps have been added since November 2014).

Unfortunately, the app does not offer selection by parameters. You just scroll descriptions, game by game, reading each one carefully and trying some of those you like, until you find the games you really like. It would be much simpler for users to filter the games by some feature. For example, you need a spectacular 3D chess game. Or an app with “hot seat” mode. Or the one with online rating. Selecting among apps by parameters would be much greater.

Anyway, it’s still a good shell to find your own chess in. But after you install an app you have found, you may forget about Chess Games. You can’t launch apps from within this app. You’ll have to do it in a common way, by icons from the list.

So yes, cutting the long story short, it’s just a list of chess apps from Google Play, not absolutely exhaustible and not edited properly. The second game it offers is not available anymore.

Controls 4,5/5

If the mission is to offer you as many chess apps as you can, for you to select which one to install, the app gets the job done. But there’s much more we’d wish. This app could have made more sense as a digest of popular chess apps, with frequent updates and some news. Well, we wouldn’t even mind some push notifications on adding some apps or updating the existing! Let alone the tournaments the digest could have arranged. But the app seems to be abandoned since 2014.

The worse part of it is being slow as hell. Even 2016 flagships (like Meizu Pro 6 Plus) run it too slowly. It would be wise not to open this app (and even to remove it) after you find the chess games you like.

Replay Value 4/5

It’s only an Android app (that’s understood, as cross-platform chess games are rare). But even Android 2.3 is still supported. We didn’t have such an old device while testing the app, so we tried in on Android 4.4, 6.0 and 7.0.

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t sort the available apps by compatibility. The list is the same on each device we have tried it on. Even the apps removed from Google Play are still offered by Chess Game (download is, of course, impossible).

In-app purchases

The app ‘s name means that you can download chess games for free through it. And yes, in fact you do. The ones we have tried are free (though they may offer some premium content for money, but Chess Games developers are not responsible for that). As for the app itself, it sounds strange to accuse it for offering ads, because advertising other apps just what it’s meant for.

Conclusion

The app could have been something much better, hasn’t it been abandoned and left long ago. The idea of chess apps digest is quite a good one, considering chess a social game. The app could have been a good shell integrating different apps. It could have even transferred your moves from one app to another, connecting players no matter what app they use! But what we see in fact is just a list of chess apps, and it’s useless after you find what you want