- Physical board to play digitally
- GoChess connects to popular Chess websites
- Lots of fun features
Chess has been around for a long, long time now. There are tons of different Chess boards, both digital and physical; however, GoChess brings digital Chess to life, allowing you to pair your digital Chess matches with a real-life, hi-tech board!
GoChess App
This physical board, paired with the GoChess app, allows you to play Chess in real life while following the digital board on your mobile device. You can log into a couple of different popular Chess websites like Lichess and Chess.com to take on other players who are also playing on these websites. Alternatively, you can play against someone in real life, recording and watching the moves on your mobile, or play against their built-in AI. As someone who doesn't play a whole lot of Chess, I did like that you can set the difficulty of the AI.
In the app, you can also unlock Daily Puzzle mode, which is a small puzzle with limited pieces that you need to solve. There is often a direction that is given with the puzzle, along with a single hint before it will reveal the answer. You can also see the rating of the puzzle if you are looking to improve your rating or understand your score. It's worth mentioning that GoChess isn't looking to teach you Chess, but instead enhance your experience.
The Physical GoChess Board
The GoChess Board is extremely well-made. The pieces are sleek, weighty, and magnetic, meaning they feel good moving around the board. You do need to charge up the Chess board so that it can connect via Bluetooth to your device. Once you set up and get playing, picking up a piece will let the board light up, showing you where you can move it. When the AI or other player makes a move, you can also follow the circles to move their pieces to the right spot. Most of the time, this works very well, though sometimes I did find myself needing to push the piece down hard onto the board so that it would register on my device.
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The board also comes with two GoChess bags for the pieces (one for black, one for white), along with charging cables and even a stand for easier storage. It's a well-thought-out board and I found it almost magical seeing the places that I could move a piece to on the board in front of me.
GoChess review - "Playing IRL and Online"
If you are someone that finds yourself playing a lot of online Chess and want to have that physical feel, this is a fantastic board. The technology within it feels well-thought-out, though it could be a little less sensitive at times! I almost wish it played a sound when it accepted the move, but otherwise, I think it's a great piece of kit.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley