Very interesting chess game. The nonstandard starting positions make the game a great series of chess exercises to better your playing skills and a fun way to engage in a game that can feel too serious and/or occasionally repetitive… but it has some serious flaws. No draws is the biggest one I’ve come across so far - the AI has gotten itself in a position where it is unable to beat me, and I am now tasked with either losing anyway or giving up on the app entirely, just because the game’s too dumb to realize it cannot win. I do have the option to surrender, but it kind of kills the fun for me to be required to lose simply because I’m smarter than the AI in this position - it absolutely could pursue a victory, but it can only fathom one move in this position, which should earn me a draw. It’s not smart enough to win, so it’s my job to hold its hand a press the surrender button. I hope further updates allow the AI to, at the very least, not brick games like this.

I am writing this hoping the developer may considers either changing this or adding an option for the users.The concepts of Really Bad Chess is very interesting. It lets you play positions which are often impossible in regular chess or even in chess 960. Sometimes perhaps the position is conceivable but you will never see it in either a match or a chess puzzle. Unfortunately there are some serious problems with the app presentation and design.A very serious flaw in the app for me is that when the AI moves their pieces the pieces it moves appear at their destination instantly. It is very frustrating to have to look over the entire board for 1-3 seconds to identify what piece was moved and to what square. If you focus your mind at the board and search for moves this is incredibly frustrating.Another big problem is that the black and the white pieces have a thick white outline which makes it difficult to analyze the board. At minimum it makes it confusing and uncomfortable. Could you either add an option to not have the white outline, or just use standard widely used chess fonts that are in the free domain?I could think of many other ways Very Bad Chess could be improved but those 2 are the biggest issues.

Except that it tells you "don't be afraid to undo" when you start the game, but you can't undo the last move if you get mated. I lost my daily streak because of that. It wouldn't be a problem if you didn't only get two attempts at it. For a game that's supposed to be good for chess beginners, it sure doesn't like beginners to do well. You can also only undo the last move? I can understand that but like I said, the game itself says "great, this game is perfect for you" when you say you're not good at chess at the beginning. Not that good if you can't fix your mistakes, is it?

This game regularly makes boards that are impossible to win, against ai that seemingly knows it every time it happens. Even if you have “better” pieces due to rank it could just put them in unlucky places. This happens all of the time. There’s a reason chess has set pieces- because checkmate can be handed to you on a platter in this game. However- in this game the higher your rank is the better pieces the ai has- meaning it tends to give the ai these impossible boards unless you purposely keep your rank low (and what’s the fun in that). You’ll sit there wanting to chuck your phone across the room because you went from rank 70 to 50 seven times because the ai got lucky with it’s placements. 2 stars because if you’re lucky you can get very far into the rank before falling again, and it IS fun when it’s rigged against you.