Deep Green Chess(review)

Deep Green Chess for iPad is an extraordinarily beautiful game for iPad with incredible attention to detail. You can play chess with others, against the machine, or watch as the machines hash it out between themselves. The levels become challenging pretty quickly, but it’s very suitable for both beginners and professional chess players. You can tweak various parameters in the chess engine to make the machine play more like a human would. This iPad game really shines when it comes to the interface and the way you interact with the pieces. Starting with the pleasure of letting you set up the board yourself (optional), Deep Green takes care of a host of little Chess-related things, including replays, take backs (undo), move suggestions, captured pieces, analog sounds when you place pieces, and much more.

The animations are all really well done in Deep Green, right down to how pieces are captured and how they move when you pick them up. More customizations include notifications for check, stalemate, and checkmate as well as saving states and coordinates between sessions. You can use two different skins based on your preferences. The board doesn’t quite fully utilize the large iPad screen, but it’s big enough to easily grasp pieces and perhaps even helps in getting a better picture of your moves and options with a smaller board. This is the chess game for iPad – a superb implementation of the classic game.