Halfchess — “Mini-Me” of chess is evil
Halfchess.com is International chess played on a smaller board. It fits better on a mobile screen and allows casual chess players to play faster games. Halfchess aims to build a chess community for casual chess players.
There is no shortage of chess variations have been covered on Gamezebo before, so what’s new about Halfchess. The thing about chess variations is that they are really easy to come up with but are not as easy to popularize. The frequent chess audience will usually go back to playing International chess post a weekend respite from the mothership.
You can download Halfchess on both Android and iOS, to find out how challenging it would be to play chess on half of the board (as in, what would be either of the Queens or the Kings side). You can up the challenge by playing in pro-mode. I highly recommend pro-mode at $4.99 — ‘thank you for buying me tea’.
How is it different?
If Halfchess was not an app, what would it be?
It would possibly be a cafe or a bar for chess lovers and chess boxers; a part of a community. We would help sell tickets to local chess-boxing tournaments. It could also be a chess-gym, where you play chess between exercises. It only has to be half chess, the other half can be anything.
Lets compare it to all other chess variations that have been featured on gamezebo before. Because you possibly already know the advantages of other games, I will focus on the advantages of Halfchess.
- My personal favorite among other chess variations apps is — Chezz. It has beautiful graphics and animations. Compared to Chezz, this app takes much lesser battery and space on your phone. While Chezz is above 150 MBs in size, Halfchess is 6 Mbs on iOS and 3 Mbs on Android with a minimalistic UI.
- Really Bad Chess is very random arrangements of chess pieces on the board. In Halfchess, each of the starting arrangements is carefully crafted to have a different experience.
- Compared to speed chess on chess.com, Halfchess allows newbies to finish a game easily under 5 minutes. We have added a piece crab, a pawn which moves in a zig-zag line and adds newness to the game. We plan to add more such pieces.
Playing against the AI
You can play Halfchess against the computer or against humans.
Usually playing against the computer sucks. We tried to work on that problem by making the computer more adaptive.
Playing against a computer is designed into many levels. The computer also adapts to your skill set in each stage, but each stage is harder than the last one.
Each stage offers increasing difficulty, but if you draw; you would get an extra piece in the next match. It is more fun to take on a computer with reinforcements.
The players earn stars ★ and titles 🏆 like Chess Master and Grand Master by beating the computer.
Playing against friends
Playing against people is always more fun. If you have a set of friends who are into mind training (could be your office group or college group) — you should try this game with them. You would have to send them a match invite link via a chatting app.
If your chess friend you has a higher rating, you still stand a good chance to beat them Halfchess. A better chess memory does not gives lesser of an advantage in Halfchess.
If you are sending an invite on WhatsApp, my tip would be to make it personal. I usually post a message and a selfie — like “in a bus waiting… <PICTURE>” and someone else joins me for a game. So asking for a game, sorta also becomes an excuse to send my selfie to others — umm sometimes.
Join the Community
“If Chess is wine, Half Chess is brandy. This is a wild game, exercise caution and count your fingers afterwards.” … We want to help you find opponents and have started an invite only whatsapp group. Please fill the below form to join us.
Upcoming updates
There are few updates that are coming in this order :-
- We will have a local mode. The local mode will allow you to play Halfchess with your kids on the same device — and develop their growing brain matter; while giving you an activity to do with them.
- Talk to your opponents while playing. Halfchess is so fast that there is simply no time to chat, it can only be a talking to send a message.
- A community for playing chess — we are brewing one on whatsapp and figuring out how the ranking should work. To join our whatsapp community — write me a mail (via the apps feedback section — under About Us) or fill the form above.
And somewhere along the line, we also plan to redo our graphics entirely. Take some inspiration from leaders in this segment — like Chezz.
If all this sounds fun — download our game and shoot us a request to join our whatsapp group too. In addition to games with other members, you can also solve some puzzles on our whatsapp and facebook groups.
