Chess Knights: Shinobi

Genre: Puzzle / Board Game

Players: 1

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Review:

Chess Knights: Shinobi, released on PC in 2020 and ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a Puzzle game that takes the basic rules of the classic Board Game, Chess, and uses them to challenge players to move knight pieces from a starting point to an exit.

The presentation in this game is decent but not especially noteworthy, save for the unusual choice to apply a Japanese samurai theme to the game. The 3D pieces and their surroundings are depicted as vaguely Japanese-style objects, and while this looks okay, it also makes it harder to tell what the different types of pieces are. These visuals are backed by a minimalist instrumental soundtrack that sounds like something fitting to the Japanese setting being depicted.

While this seems like it would be a decent enough way to dress up an otherwise straightforward Puzzle game, I’m sorry to say that the gameplay here is broken in multiple ways. First, puzzles frequently have enemy pieces that players must avoid, but the way these pieces are used is inconsistent. A bishop might guard one diagonal but not another, and the player is given no indication of this, making much of this game an exercise in trial and error based on purely arbitrary restrictions.

The other problem is that the game is wildly inconsistent with its goals. Most levels have players getting to an ending square, but then you get an occasional level that inexplicably ends before you’ve even gotten that far, while other levels force you to go to the ending square and then return to the starting square. None of this is conveyed to the player.

The camera is also a major issue here. You can rotate and zoom the camera, but it is always fixed on a point at the center of the board/puzzle, meaning that if you want to get a closer look at one side of the board, you’re out of luck. Also, the way your cursor moves does not adjust relative to where your camera is, which means sometimes you may have to press down and left on the analog stick to move up and to the right, as an example.

Finally, I should mention that this game does support the use of the touchscreen, which mostly works okay but sometimes doesn’t seem to detect input. Also, I should note that this game has an absurdly long startup time given how unimpressive the game’s visuals are, with multiple logos hanging on-screen for far longer than they needed to. And yet despite this, I had my game crash multiple times.

Even if it worked properly, Chess Knights: Shinobi would have been an unexciting take on an old formula for a Puzzle game. However, with all of the problems this game has, and especially the fact that the way puzzles work is so inexplicably arbitrary and inconsistent, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game to anyone, even the biggest fan of Chess and Puzzle games.

tl;dr – Chess Knights: Shinobi is a Puzzle game using Chess rules where players must move a knight piece to an exit. Unfortunately, this game is loaded with problems, with the most major one being arbitrary and inconsistent game design. Simply put, this game is broken. Do not pay for it.

Grade: F

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