Colour Chess is an adaption of the recently released board game by Dog Eared Games, an independent board game producer in the UK. This mobile port makes playing Colour Chess a lot easier, as you don’t require the cumbersome box and multitude of adaptable pieces – you can just use the app. The app plays virtually the same as it does the board, only with the exception that it has a helpful reminder of what colour you need to move to so as to be able to complete your turn.
Colour Chess might seem like a name for someone’s especially colourful chess set, but it is actually a significant adaption from the established rules of this very old game. At its base, Colour Chess plays almost identically to chess, with the Queen, Bishops and Pawns and all the rest of it. However, instead of the standard plain chess board, the board is actually composed of randomly assigned colours. This colourful board is what twists the base game of chess into something entirely different. Although all the pieces move in chess as normal, they need to conform to certain colour allocations.
Each turn, you get two moves – the first to move to the same colour your opponent just moved to, then one more move wherein you can dictate the colour for your opponent. This simple change makes the game have an entirely different level of strategic depth – not only are you playing chess and needing to plan moves ahead, but you are being forced to adapt your playstyle based on your opponent’s choices regarding their colours.
Though this might not seem that different, the change is noticeable immediately, as you will suddenly find yourself forced to move your valuable pieces in ways you had never intended them because of your opponent’s colour choices. As the colour palette of the board is randomized, you can come up with new ways of strategically undermining your opponent each time. Of course, they can do the same to you.
However, Colour Chess suffers from one significant problem that plagues many new strategy apps; low playerbase.
If you want to actually find a player to play with, you will end up spending a long time searching for someone without much hope. This will hopefully not be a problem as the game is made more popular, but as it stands, the only way to actually play the game is to have someone else to play with locally. This means running a two-player game on one screen, allowing you to play it with your friend. Failing that, you could always do the challenges and be told “Wrong Move” 400 times in a row.
Colour Chess is a game with extreme potential, with a huge amount of strategic depth and a unique twist on the standard chess game; it just needs more people to play it.
