Chess Maiden

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Chess Maiden, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a version of the classic Board Game that pits the player against a large-chested anime-style girl in a maid outfit. The game’s description claims that one of the key selling points here is the AI, which it touts as “specifically designed to mimic the thought process and strategy of a human player”. So, is this game aiming to be about simulating a game with a real opponent? About titillation? Or perhaps about just providing players with a good game of chess?

Well, as it happens… none of the above.

Let’s start with the titillation. This game’s presentation does indeed feature the titular maiden rendered in full 3D swaying forward and back as she ponders what to do. However, her movements seem robotic more than anything, with her eyes moving in a set pattern, and when she reaches out to move a piece, the movement is more like a machine than anything human. Beyond this, she has no personality, and doesn’t talk or have any sort of variation in her movements.

This isn’t the only lacking part of the presentation, though. The chess pieces themselves are fairly low-poly, as is the room you’re in (it could be a bedroom, a study, or a classroom, it’s hard to tell), with flat, boring textures and unimpressive shadows. Unfortunately, the lack of texture or good lighting can make it hard to distinguish the pieces on the board at times, and there are only a few preset camera positions to cycle between, none of them great.

On top of this, the sound here really kills any prospect of titillation. Or perhaps I should say, the lack thereof – you will spend most of this game in eerie silence, with the only noises being the canned “thump” of moving pieces and the artificial chimes as you take pieces. In short, unless you’re enticed by the thought of playing a chess game with a busty anime-style robot girl who has zero personality and with everything in near-complete silence, this isn’t likely to titillate you.

Okay, so how about Chess Maiden being a quality chess game? Again, definitely not. This game fails to have not only the basic functionality you expect from a computer chess game, but fails to represent the game itself properly. There’s no difficulty settings, no option to undo, no readout of the prior moves, no tutorial, no clock, no alternate visualizations for the board, pieces, or setting… this is as bare-bones and featureless as you could ever expect to find in a chess game. And then, on top of that, this game lacks things like castling (a move where you can move the king two spaces toward a rook while placing the rook on the other side). That a chess game could be missing so basic an element is outright unforgivable.

With this game being so terrible at providing players with a chess game, I suppose it will be no surprise for me to tell you that the much-touted AI is terrible too. You’ll be waiting for minutes between each move as the AI opponent ponders what to do. It’s infuriating how this game wastes your time like this. However, it gets worse. At the end of my first game, I had my AI opponent on the ropes. I swooped in with my queen for a check, which I soon realized would mate in the next move. Apparently the AI opponent must have realized this too, because she did the only two things she thought she could to avoid a mate – first, she attempted an illegal move, moving another piece to try to get me in check without freeing her own king from check. To the game’s credit, this wasn’t allowed, and she was forced to retract that move and try again. However, in the absence of a clock, her next choice was to simply freeze and refuse to respond to my move at all – she literally just sat there, swaying forward and back, doing nothing for a half an hour rather than simply accepting defeat.

I can’t help but feel like Chess Maiden was released before it was finished, as every element of this game is lacking important features – the chess doesn’t have basic elements like castling, the game lacks even the most rudimentary of features you’d look for in a chess game, and the titular maiden is silent, robotic, and lacking all personality. This game is so broken that it simply froze up and refused to progress rather than let me win. In short, I don’t know what you’re looking for in getting Chess Maiden, but you won’t find it here.

tl;dr – Chess Maiden is a version of the classic Board Game that has players playing against a large-chested anime-style girl. Unfortunately, every element of this game is broken – the chess is missing important gameplay elements like castling, the game is completely devoid of features, and the maiden is cold, robotic, silent, and absolutely devoid of any personality. No matter what you wanted out of this game, you won’t find it here.

Grade: F

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Worst Game – I reviewed a lot of games in 2023 that were lazy attempts to use the base objectification of women to try to sell people on a bad game, but Chess Maiden really takes the cake. For starters, I highly doubt anyone would get excited over the creepy robot girl this game has you playing against, but even worse than that, they couldn’t even get the rules of chess right. Chess! One of the oldest games of all time! As if that wasn’t bad enough, when it became clear that I was about to get the creepy robot girl into a checkmate, its AI responded first by trying several illegal moves, and then by simply refusing to make a move at all rather than concede defeat. My jaw hit the floor with just how bad this game was. It fails on absolutely every level.

Runner-Up: The “Who asked for this!?” Award

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