Cat Chess

How's this for dating myself: This is Battlechess, but 3D and with cats. I mean, it's chess. Pawns, en passant, castling, sinking the other guy's battleship, you know all that. (Minus the battleship bit, I was just pullin' your leg.) The pieces are cats. You click on your cat to move it, it will look up at the camera, wherever you put it. They make cat noises, meowing and purring. Except for the king, that fat chonk, that's voiced by a dude with a lovely deep voice going, "Meyooow." The selling point is the captures: there's a little animation that happens. Pawn-kitties whap captured pawn kitties on the top of the head. Bigger pieces may have sillier animations. Each capture animation is exactly the same, ie: the queen always grooms the enemy bishop, the rook sticks a box on the knight's head, etc. You run the risk of the novelty wearing off quickly, in which case you're left with a chess game with meows. There's a ten-match campaign against the enemy AI, whose sole purpose is a few unlocks: changing the colour of the cats, and ultimately unlocking a golden set so your cats can be blingy and rizz or whatever the correct term is. This campaign AI is not a very good opponent at all, so you have ten perfunctory matches to get through to do ten perfunctory matches to unlock a few in-game features: changing the colour of your cats, and optionally having an all-gold skin. Mostly this unlocks the power to really offend the eyeball as it gives you the full 24-bit RGB gamut. Unless acid-yellow-and-purple cats don't offend you, because that's the natural outcome of that sorta thing. Now, the difficulty can be scalable in custom matches and is ostensibly capable of 3000 ELO; I'm no master chess player but the 1500 ELO put up enough of a fight and wasn't doing dumb things like feeding me pawns. If you've got an absolute mania for chess, this will solve it, but in a fairly basic sort of way. Well, you can also play it online if you find somebody else with the game. There's me! But truth be told, I'm not sure I want to go around playing chess seriously. I used to, many moons ago, and I've come to appreciate having moved on. Seriously, I got this because I like cats, and the little intro movies made me laugh. Cat-whaps amuse me. I got this because of cats slapping each other, that's about it. The animation of the pawn taking out bigger pieces amuses me to no end, and the game puts little musical stings at just the right moment to ham this up even further. A+. This will be good to amuse your nieces, teach them a little chess perhaps, or if you have a friend who's a bit of a chess-duffer and really likes silly cat hijinks, here you go. Serious chess players may want a game with more features. Me? I got my money's worth after a few hours, can't complain. That said, I might just consider streaming a match or two in the near future. I just need people also crazy enough to want to watch and/or cat-whap me. How's that for bespoke, curated entertainment experiences? This is no mere "content". Details are on my profile, partially because I hate advertising, also because it's a hump so small I can be sure only the best people get in.

Very little depth; the AI in the game is terrible, seems like there's no real soundtrack besides public domain classical music, and PvE is missing a lot of features that would make you enjoy playing. There's "toys" like a laser pointer and yarn ball you can drop, but they do basically nothing. No "friendly" mode for PvE where you can undo moves, no way to learn or improve at the game like Chess.com's move ratings. I feel like this should have been an early access release while they expand on content; for now we basically just have the cat animations and engine.

За идею - плюс, за реализацию - минус. Возможно, это будет поводом улучшать игру и дальше. Итак, что мы получаем в этой игре? Шахматы. Основная фишка? Котики. Разные - пираты, породистые и не очень, даже какие-то мутанты. И анимации взятия. Чего нет? Плавных анимаций - нет отдельной анимации взятия на проходе, все остальные - однотипные для каждого варианта взятия. Плюс, поверженные кошки просто уходят через всё поле за доску со стороны противника, проходя через фигуры, кстати. Ещё мы получаем неудобные ракурсы камеры, некоторые анимации будто обрываются или просто недоделаны. Игра не оптимизирована, к тому же. Да, есть приятная классическая музыка, хорошая задумка - но большинство шахматистов вряд ли обрадуется играть в шахматы под углом, а не просто на 2d доске, так что это скорее - для пары вечеров фана с друзьями. Плюс, русский перевод кривой - надписи даже не влезают в интерфейс, а после победы в кампании игра просто застревает, и приходится выходитть из партии вручную. В общем, очень сырой продукт с потенциалом стать хорошим развлечением на пару-тройку дней. Нужно ли оно вам?

It’s a fun game, but there’s just one thing holding it back: there’s no time control in online mode, which means that, quite simply, your opponent doesn’t make a move in a position where the programme has calculated the best course of action, and you end up having to quit because it’s impossible to win. If this were fixed, it would be perfect; as it stands, playing online is practically impossible.

I mostly got the game in hopes of some sort of campaign and ofc there is one. Reality of it is its just 10 games with increasing difficulty which sits somewhere between 0-1000 it doesnt get much higher so its accessible for all players of all levels. Problem is after that there is really nothing more to do its simply a choose a rating and play chess game thats about it. Ofc I gave it positive because it doesnt claim to be anything else and is a fairly decent price for what it is. For me personally I'd like to see more PvE options. For example something simple would be have a PvE where your rating starts at 100 and progresses the each time you win adding a sense of progress where you can see yourself improve and see where you stand. Rather than a simple "pick a rating and play" sort of thing. It seems like something small but I personally thing it matters as games without progression in some why feels a bit pointless. (This is from a gaming point of view, specifically for people who dont want to play PvP). Now ill ramble. How about a mode where you have to conquer the cats taking over your territory. There can be multiple areas where you have to challenge other cats to regain the area. It can show the rating of that area so you know if you can and cant beat it personally. Each victory leads to winning the area and money. The money can be used to buy hints in games to help players find answers they havent seen, or move roll backs, force opponent to blunder, remove piece from opponents starting pieces. This means players can farm lower levels they feel more comfortable in and use the gold to help them overcome the harder obstacles until they win. It can also be accessible to any level while also having higher rated opponents for more skilled players looking for a more challenging PvE experience. Also AI could use some work. From my experience in the campaign all levels the AI felt like pushing the outer pawns right up to the other side until I did something for it to actively react to. Idk what the actual rating is for the last couple levels but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming its below 1000 rather than broken or silly AI. Idk if others have had the same experience it might be something I personally caused. Also if you are looking for a fun quirky Chess game to put hours into, just take a look at all the reviews play time and reconsider for the time being. If you're in it for the cats then go for it. The game needs work but low price so I wont complain, there are infact cats. Clicking the king cats brings me alot of joy.

Its Chess with Cats. That is what you are Buying, no more, no less. That being said, Animations are pretty good and it is a Relaxing Game. If you like the idea of Cats being in Chess, then get this Game.

Dont buy this. Game is forcing random stalemates when there is no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stalemate. Very frustrating to restart to random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥...