Early impressions of Chess VR

[cyclicbug]

For a budget VR game this offering of chess is very good value, it looks good, runs smooth and is stable and the dev seems to be supporting it with updates and improvements so far, which is nice to see.

I am only a casual chess player so cannot comment on difficulty or level of AI, but it is tough enough for me as I have yet to win ( but I find it diffcult to think even one move ahead yet ).

The first thing I noticed and liked was a good sense of scale which you get straight away from entering the menu/start screen where you are placed on the ground in front of a very large empty chess board, which I believe to be a mountain top. The environment visuals are very well done and on a par with other, even more expensive Vr titles.

I admit to having a vertigo moment the first time I selected to play ( which added to the VR'ness of the experience ), when I materialised into the full scale world atop one of the pedestals set on columns above the board, this is a great idea and gives the feeling of great power looking down on your chess pieces waiting to be sent into battle by the chess god.

The pieces are well realised with a good amount of detail and are very well animated, although the animations are a little limited and I some loop end/starts were noticable, but these are small issues that don't really detract from the game and it is testiment to the looks and immersion of the game that it's possible to be a little to critical and forget the low price of the game.

You can move around above the board by use of the track pad, selecting and moving pieces is done by ue of the Vive controller ( for me ) which if you have played PC based chess before is pretty similar to mouse/gamepad use, so was easy to do, I did have some trouble seeing which target squares I was selecting pieces to move to occasionally, but this was a minor problem and may be more down to me than the ui.