Let's Play: Simply Chess

This year, Minecraft will turn 15. Our little crafting game may not be old enough to drive or run for president - yet - but it’s certainly growing up. However, when it comes to being old, Minecraft has nothing on chess. Chess has been around for well over 1000 years! For context, if you’re one of our millions of one-year-old readers, chess is 1000 times as old as you are. Wow! 

But is chess any good? All the ingredients of a great game are in there. Knights, Bishops, a King and Queen. Minecraft doesn’t have any of those, which is why I’m uninstalling it immediately. 

Wait a hot second… Minecraft can have those in it. Once I download Simply Chess by Yeggs on the Minecraft Marketplace!

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that in Simply Chess you get a lovely chessboard to play chess on (if this does surprise you, consider consulting your doctor).

The board is so massive, though, that the pieces tower over you. Here’s me trying not to be intimidated by the King:

A game where you have to agonisingly heave gigantic chess pieces across the board doesn’t really appeal. Luckily, you can walk off the board and grant yourself a better view from the stands. Then you can simply point and click to move the pieces, like some sort of chess-based wizard.

You can also look down on the board, as snobbily as you like. Look upon all those pawns, knights, castles, and the rest, ready to do your bidding!

Unfamiliar with the rules of chess? No problem! Simply Chess comes with an excellent, straightforward tutorial. I, however, do not come with an excellent, straightforward tutorial, so wish me luck teaching you how chess works:

The objective is to take out the opponent’s King. As a British person, I am a little worried that victory in this game will be considered treason. But I also now have a bulletproof excuse for losing. So that’s nice.

Let’s meet our loyal soldiers:

Don’t worry if that was all gibberish to you. The tutorial in Simply Chess will make it crystal clear on how to play. And once you’ve got the rules down, you can play against a friend. Or you can play against the computer. I don’t have any frie- er, I mean, all my friends were busy buying me gifts because of how great I am, so I decided to play against the computer opponent, Robert the Robot.

The game begins. I move one of my pawns two spaces forward. Robert immediately moves one of his pawns two spaces forward. Dang, he’s good.

It’s several more moves before one of us successfully takes out one of their opponents pieces (who achieved this first is irrelevant). Delightfully, this is animated by the chess piece knocking the other piece over in an unnecessarily harsh way, complete with perfectly chosen thunk noise, and… hold up. Is Robert smack-talking me?

Oh, so that’s how it is, huh Robert? Y’know, I was considering deliberately being rubbish at chess for the sake of a more entertaining article. But that was before you, a mere machine, thought you could sass me, arguably the most beloved member of the human race. I grab one of my pawns and take out one of Robert’s. Ha!

Oh goody! Robert didn’t take that well at all:

It’s a tough match, especially now I’m actually trying. But the best part? I haven’t played chess in over a decade and it totally holds up! Strategic, vicious, full of twists and turns, and I always love a game where just one stupid mistake can ruin everything - keeps the tension sky-high. Besides, if we didn’t make mistakes, how would we learn? Like that time Mojang Studios made a mistake by hiring me.

A more modest writer wouldn’t end this story by bragging about how they beat Robert the Robot. Good for them. Better for me, though, because SUCK IT ROBOT, I BEAT YOU YES I DIDDDDDD CHECKMATE YOU SILLY TIN CAN.

When you win, the game celebrates your victory by playing an almighty ROAR as if a lion has just won the chess match. Hey, it’s not like the sound I actually made was even 1/10th as dignified. 

If you want to join in the dignified fun, you can get Simply Chess today in the Minecraft Marketplace. 

See you next month! Unless that robot triggers a machine uprising solely to get revenge for this. But that seems nice and unlikely to me :)