BOT.vinnik Chess: Late USSR Championships

BOT.vinnik Chess: Late USSR Championships is one of around six educational Chess puzzle games where you play subsets of chess games under guidance from a slightly snarky 2D retro pixel robot. The purpose is to teach advanced Chess stratagems to the player. While the puzzles are fun and exceptionally clever, and the core design work, especially selecting and presenting the puzzles is very good, the implementation here is not so good. Each game only has around 20 short puzzles, and it's unclear why this had to be launched as 6 separate games. Did the publisher really want to pay Valve $600 instead of the $100 required to launch a game? The visual and interface quality is very low, as well, with monochrome 2D retro pixel art making everything look ugly. This is the kind of thing that really could have been done in a browser or even just a Youtube video, so charging money for it on Steam seems overly ambitious.

This new chapter in the BOT.vinnik game series continues the great journey in teaching and introducing us to famous plays, always with its comedic and fun touch! As always, I recommend it to Chess lovers.