System: Valve Index & HTC Vive
Price at Time Of Review: £0.79
Comfort Rating: Green
Genre: Strategy
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Sitting
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
VR Shop Score 1/100: 70
Description: Very Real Chess is one of the first Virtual Reality chess games created specifically for a Steam VR experience. Compete one-on-one with AI in a fully-featured chess environment. Move around in a simplistic room-scale or standing-only game environment. Play against the computer with one of the best AI in the world — the Stockfish chess engine. Play on either side as white or black. Wrong move detection tells you when a move is not possible. The overhead view allows the player to see the chessboard from above like a traditional 2D chess game. Interested in developing your own virtual reality experience? Very Real Chess is released under the GPL 3.0 license, so contact the developer for source code!
Review: One of the best things about playing chess in VR is the feeling of solitude. It takes you away and helps you to concentrate a lot more on the game, rather than what is going on around you. Which is a good thing, because in ‘Very Real Chess’ there really isn’t anything going on around you. My biggest problem with this game is the lack of multiplayer mode, even a local mode would have been nice. But can you really moan when it only costs £0.79? Not really, but you should be aware that there are better VR chess games out there, but this one is OK for some practice.
