Last updated on December 15th, 2025 at 03:46 am
Really Bad Chess+ – Board Game Review
Really Bad Chess+ is a Board game from STFJ LLC, first launched in 2nd April 2021.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 142+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Really Bad Chess+ Stand Out
Really Bad Chess is just like chess, but with totally random pieces. Try 8 Knights, 4 Bishops, and 3 pawns — why not?
As heard on NPR's Weekend Edition
5 out of 5 Stars "An essential puzzle experience for anyone even remotely interested in strategy games" – TouchArcade
Whether you play chess daily, or quit just after learning the rules, this small twist will open the door to an entire new world of chess.
——WHATS IN THE “BOX”?
Compete vs. an AI in Ranked, Daily, or Weekly Challenges. Improve your skills using the included Freeplay mode. Compete against your friends locally in versus mode!
——REALLY BAD PRESS
"Makes chess fun even if you’re really bad" – The Verge
"Feels more modern than chess has ever felt" – Applenapps
"Really Bad Chess takes a really bad idea and somehow manages to make it a lot of fun." – Pocket Gamer
"Really good fun" – MacLife
——A WORD FROM THE DEVELOPER
Chess is one of those games I always wished I enjoyed, but its commitment to beauty, elegance, and perfect balance always turned me away. Really Bad Chess removes these boring restrictions and flips chess on its head.
As much as random pieces change the game in some ways, I was really surprised to notice how much the game remains the same, and how powerful some pieces are — you've never truly struggled against a pawn until you've struggled against a pawn in the back row.
For chess pros, Really Bad Chess will give you a new type of challenge — the pieces & the moves are the same, but you'll have to throw out your openings and your understanding of normal patterns of play.
For novice chess players (like most of us), Really Bad Chess greatly opens up the game. Instead of starting by studying openings, in your first games you'll get to discover the joy (and challenge!) of learning how to checkmate.
I hope you have as much fun with Really Bad Chess as much as I did making it.
-zach
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Really Bad Chess+ is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 3rd March 2022
Recent improvements include:
Fixes to streak code.
Download & Availability
Really Bad Chess+ is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Really Bad Chess+ 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:
Im addicted to this game. We dont even play much chess, but this version is sooo fun. Whoever came up with this idea is a genius.
We found a bug that when you are trying to make a move, it wont let you move! We found this near the end of a match, if that helps. Otherwise really fun! Edit: It would not move any pieces when Im in checkmate. Pls fix it.
The pieces are in the wrong places and it makes it more fun.
First off this game is exactly what we were looking for in a chess game. Clean, simple look with options to change easily. Fast gameplay with an undo and challenging. Secondly we never realized how important pawns are since youre lucky to get two. Sure five queens sounds great, but them grunts hold the fort. Hard to take this game seriously which means losing is as fun as winning. When we cancel arcade this app is staying put.
A fun chess game if youre bored of the original one all the pieces are swapped and switched witch makes it very fun we highly recommend it.
Love the different take on the game. Dont suggest it for folks wanting traditional chess. Do suggest it for a different take on chess though. Really enjoy the challenge of totally different set ups. We feel it does help with normal chess in doing analysis of situations. But this is DIFFERENT than normal chess. We really enjoy this.
If the bot gets in a position where it can constantly check you but never mate you, it will get stuck forever and you can do anything, it will never stop giving checks forcing you to move or block and its terrible (five stars bc apple hides 1 star reviews).
There have been several situations where Ive had to resign because the AI keeps putting our king in check, and because the game doesnt allow for stalemates, theres no other way for us to end the game without resigning. Otherwise, we like the way this game plays, we like the unusual set up, we like a lot about the game. And we play it daily.
Very different than regular chess. Especially challenging to deal with lots of knights and bishops. New way to think about chess. Note if you get in a situation where your best move keeps getting countered with the same move the game will let that garbage go on forever and never call it a draw. Only way to get out is to make a bad move, even a game losing move. Ive even had a situation where we were in check and only had one possible move and the computer had numerous possible moves but kept making the same one. This will go on literally forever leaving you no choice but to terminate the game. Developer needs to fix that nonsense.
Its a good game to kill time, and almost everyone can play it because you can just tap where you want the pieces to go.
Please add draws by repetition. The game is really fun but sometimes our king gets trapped in a repetition loop from the AI and makes the game never end unless we forfeit. After 3 repeated positions by both players it should be called a draw and you shouldnt lose any ranking because the AI wouldnt change its move.
There are a couple of small things Id like to see. First, A.we to be a little easier. A couple of good games and we feel like Im playing pros. Secondly, and lastly, the colors of the boards, themes, need to be easier to see. You cant see the colors youre choosing due to the menu list. These are the only two complaints we have besides this, it puts a SUPER FUN twist on a regular game. Great game, little changes that are fairly minor.
Very interesting chess game. The nonstandard starting positions make the game a great series of chess exercises to better your playing skills and a fun way to engage in a game that can feel too serious and/or occasionally repetitive but it has some serious flaws. No draws is the biggest one Ive come across so far – the AI has gotten itself in a position where it is unable to beat us, and we are now tasked with either losing anyway or giving up on the app entirely, just because the games too dumb to realize it cannot win. We do have the option to surrender, but it kind of kills the fun for us to be required to lose simply because Im smarter than the AI in this position – it absolutely could pursue a victory, but it can only fathom one move in this position, which should earn us a draw. Its not smart enough to win, so its our job to hold its hand a press the surrender button. We hope further updates allow the AI to, at the very least, not brick games like this.
The computer AI is pretty bad and though the concept is great its re-playability isnt. Times when the computer should be able to put you into checkmate it cant and the game wont stalemate. The imbalance that is supposed to make the game more difficult is often too one sided. Theres no custom rules like a rooks only mode or something fun. All around great idea. But greatly mediocre application.
We were playing ranked mode and it said checkmate but we still had several moves.
This game is interesting and can be fun. But if you arent a seasoned player dont waste your time. Get past level 50 and the game goes into Bobby Fisher mode and even though our level has gone back into the 20s, the game beats us in about 5 moves every round now. Would be nice to have some skill level settings.
Except that it tells you "don't be afraid to undo" when you start the game, but you can't undo the last move if you get mated. We lost our daily streak because of that. It wouldn't be a problem if you didn't only get two attempts at it. For a game that's supposed to be good for chess beginners, it sure doesn't like beginners to do well. You can also only undo the last move? We can understand that but like we said, the game itself says "great, this game is perfect for you" when you say you're not good at chess at the beginning. Not that good if you can't fix your mistakes, is it.
We are writing this hoping the developer may considers either changing this or adding an option for the users. The concepts of Really Bad Chess is very interesting. It lets you play positions which are often impossible in regular chess or even in chess 960. Sometimes perhaps the position is conceivable but you will never see it in either a match or a chess puzzle. Unfortunately there are some serious problems with the app presentation and design. A very serious flaw in the app for us is that when the AI moves their pieces the pieces it moves appear at their destination instantly. It is very frustrating to have to look over the entire board for 1-3 seconds to identify what piece was moved and to what square. If you focus your mind at the board and search for moves this is incredibly frustrating. Another big problem is that the black and the white pieces have a thick white outline which makes it difficult to analyze the board. At minimum it makes it confusing and uncomfortable. Could you either add an option to not have the white outline, or just use standard widely used chess fonts that are in the free domain? We could think of many other ways Very Bad Chess could be improved but those 2 are the biggest issues.
We really like the game. Its hard to get out of our old mental chess ruts and think in new ways, which is fabulous. Sometimes the game though wont allow us to make legal moves, good moves. Itll only show that queen can go to so far on a diagonal but not far enough to take the piece we want/need to take. That is frustrating.
Not everyone is over 2000 elo but luckily the computer is in this version of chess.
We like the app, and overall its fun. The frustration set in once you get into an infinite tie. There should be a draw option, in a match if its literally impossible for either side to win either the game should auto-call a tie or have the AI surrender at some point. Otherwise Im going to lose our streak because we surrendered and not because we lost.
Sorry, but the point of games is to be able to win. At least once. If the boards are set up with bishops across the entire first row for the computer, how could we possibly beat it? We liked it until it became impossible to win on ranked challenges. Also, it would be cool to go second sometimes. We havent found a way to do that. We have experienced such negative/hopeless feelings while playing and that only makes us want to delete the app because it becomes the opposite of fun. There are enough situations in the real world that make us feel negative/hopeless. Games are supposed to help take you away from those sentiments.
We were expecting random pieces mirrored for both sides. What we get instead is random pieces on each side. Instead of varying the skill of the computer it instead gives the computer better pieces and you worse pieces as your rank increases making anything above rank 80 just frustrating and not fun. We would love to see a mode with mirrored pieces to give the challenge of not using memorized openings but still equal chance to both sides.
Good game just need a regular mode too.
We started a match by moving a pawn two squares only to immediately have our king captured the very next move. 10/10.
Its really bad. Fantastic game tho 15/10.
This game is very fun considering we don't play chess a lot. Its fun with randomization, making it harder, or easier.
This is a fun app, but Id like it if you had animations for the pieces moving. So it didnt just look like it was snapping. And also increase the size of the chess board on the screen.
This is a fun game. Only thing we wish it had was online multiplayer.
Love concept, super fun game to play to kill time, its just annoying when the AI gets stuck in a loop of back and forth between one piece that forced a stalemate and subsequently us surrendering and losing our ranking points. If thats fixed, ill update to five stars :).
This game regularly makes boards that are impossible to win, against ai that seemingly knows it every time it happens. Even if you have better pieces due to rank it could just put them in unlucky places. This happens all of the time. Theres a reason chess has set pieces- because checkmate can be handed to you on a platter in this game. However- in this game the higher your rank is the better pieces the ai has- meaning it tends to give the ai these impossible boards unless you purposely keep your rank low (and whats the fun in that). Youll sit there wanting to chuck your phone across the room because you went from rank 70 to 50 seven times because the ai got lucky with its placements. 2 stars because if youre lucky you can get very far into the rank before falling again, and it IS fun when its rigged against you.
Honestly we were excited to play this game to learn chess but once we did learn how to play, we can back to this game with rage without bounds. Every time we get close to beating the AI they lock our rook so he cant move and then none of our queens work, it is truly infuriating. The game has no tutorial but they provide you with a chess.com link to learn the basics. We dont understand why you would even touch this game when CHESS.COM, living up to their name sake, has a way better game with real time strategies, 3D rendered pieces, a bunch of computers with varied difficulty so you can pick where you play, and just all around better mechanics. This game is a tragic example of the 2000s gaming era, thinking less equals best. While in some categories that is true it is definitely a falsehood when talking about a game that is centuries old, they needed a fresh idea and the randomized pieces dont work well enough to carry it, they usually dont work at all.
The ai for this game is simple, kill everything. We can easily win every game without ever using undo and with making stupid errors. But it would be fun anyway if there were no ads in bettered every game that play for like 1-2 minutes. Why is this game in the arcade section with ads.
Only get to try daily challenge twice? Why??? AI is ridiculous.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.4.6
- Size: 77.12 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: STFJ LLC
Last updated: 3rd March 2022 | Genre: Board | Developer: STFJ LLC