Last updated on January 21st, 2026 at 05:30 pm
Chess & Variants – Board Game Review
Chess & Variants is a Board/Strategy game from ACLAP, first launched in 1st May 2012.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 12+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Chess & Variants Stand Out
- Open up your Chess horizon *
Jocly's Chess Variants is by far the most complete mobile application for playing Chess variations.
In addition to regular Chess, it offers 45 variants, all of them featuring:
- artificial intelligence to play alone / offline
- server connectivity to play real people, create or join tables, invite friends
- full rules description
- live games are saved and can be replayed
- ELO based leaderboard
- and many more …
Supported variants:
- Classic Chess
- XiangQi (Chinese Chess)
- Gardner Chess
- MiniChess4x4
- MiniChess4x5
- MicroChess
- Baby Chess
- Malett Chess
- Los Alamos
- Chess Attack
- Courier (Middle-Age Chess)
- Makruk (Thai Chess)
- Shako (10×10 board with elephants and cannons)
- Shatranj
- Raumschach (5x5x5)
- Glinski Chess (hexagonal)
- Brusky Chess (hexagonal)
- DeVasa Chess (hexagonal)
- McCooey Chess (hexagonal)
- Shafran (hexagonal)
- Modern circular Chess (on a round board)
- Byzantine Chess (on a round board, as played in the Xth century)
- 3D Chess (6x8x3)
- Cylinder Chess
- RollerBall (Chess on an unusual board)
- Chess960 (randomized start position)
- Metamachy (big board)
- Capablanca Chess
- Carrera Chess
- Gothic Chess
- Janus Chess
- Grand Chess
- Modern Chess
- Chancellor Chess
- Wildebeest Chess
- Smess (give it a try)
- Demi Chess (half a regular board)
- Romanchenko Chess
- Amazon Chess
- Duke of Rutland Chess
- Gustav III Chess
- Hyderabad Chess
- Kaiser Chess
- SultanGame Chess
- Reformed Courier Chess
- Tutti-Frutti Chess
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Chess & Variants is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 2nd February 2015
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
39 Chess variants have been added.
It is now possible to play against remote opponents, whether you are connected at the same time or not.
Full access to played games archives for analyze.
Download & Availability
Chess & Variants is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Chess & Variants on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Many chess variants are here, including some we have never seen. We have only played against the computer so far. No problems at all.
Pretty good app for Jockly. We are using an iPhone 6 but we have a difficult time getting to our tables. It comes up quickly and crashes. We can follow an email link for our turn to a game without a problem. Wish this bug would be fixed. Also when playing mini chess variants like "chess attack" the square colors do not change when you invert the view (say you are playing the black piece s). This is because a standard 8×8 chess board always has a black square to the players lower left but this is not the case in a 5×6 variant. It would be nice if this could be fixed.
Plays great, super fun game with tons of interesting variants, including Shatranj!!!!!!! Anyway, we would give it 5 stars, but the reading the descriptions and rules is a little buggy as you can't scroll down sometimes, and also the fact that they somehow forgot to put Tamerlane Chess in there. But hey, it's an awesome app, more than worth the nothing that you pay for it (which is also pretty awesome), and everyone should get it. But seriously guys, put Tamerlane Chess in the next update and you get 5 stars.
Great game for playing lots of variants, but a lot of the games' rules won't scroll on the iPhone, so you can't see them, which is obviously a problem.
While this Chess app offers a quite a few Chess variations, and it really is alone in the App Store in that respect, there are two pretty serious issues when it on our iPhone. 1. There is no screen zoom, and for many of these Varients, the boards and pieces are so small that you really need one. Being able to select pieces for some of the games are almost impossible on an iPhone sized screen. Then theres 2. The lag. We dont mean lag when the computer opponent is thinking. Theres a lot of lag when its waiting for a move to be entered by the player. Id be poking at a piece on our screen over and over again before the poke would register. We thought that there was an issue with our screen, but no. Its the app. Everything, including trying to click the X to close out of a game just doesnt register without poking the screen over and over again. Also, Id like to beg for the inclusion of Millenium Chess, and Omega Chess. Those are our two favorite Chess varients. This app has a lot of potential, but it needs that zoom ability and something done about the lag. edit we also just discovered that on our iPhone, when we pull up the game rules, the lag increases a thousand fold. It scrolls really choppy, and it takes multiple finger slides to make it scroll just once. The scrolling and lag induced make it impossible to read the rules at all.
Since we're the 1st person who has written a review for this app so far, we're sure that you're actually going to take the time to read what we have to say, unlike all the reviews we've written for other apps (which were popular enough to be getting reviews written every other second) which we're sure were probably just ignored. But we digress. We have a (sort-of Captain Obvious) suggestion of something you could do to help improve your app. You could search Wikipedia (more thoroughly than you already have) and Google (for websites other than Wikipedia) to find even more versions/variations/styles of chess such as Shogi, Endgame Chess, Parallel Worlds Chess, Suicide Chess, Einstein Chess, Extinction Chess, Gryphon Chess, Mock Chess, Rejection Chess, Take-All, 3-Check Chess, Unirexal Chess, Progressive Chess, Double Chess, Four-way Chess, 'Maharajah and the Sepoys', Pole Chess, and even Chessers… Just a thought.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.4.4
- Size: 52.04 MB
- iOS: 6.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [ACLAP]()
Last updated: 2nd February 2015 | Genre: Board, Strategy | Developer: ACLAP