Last updated on December 14th, 2025 at 10:17 am
Surround – Online Go client – Utilities Game Review
Surround – Online Go client is a Utilities/Strategy/Board game from Hong Anh Khoa, first launched in 6th April 2021.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 44+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Surround – Online Go client Stand Out
Surround is a client to play Go online with other players on the website online-go.com (Online Go Server – OGS). OGS is a very popular Go Server with a friendly community, and this app aims to provide the best OGS experience on iPhones and iPads.
Features:
- Play Go with other Go players on OGS, either live games or turn-based (correspondence) games.
- Observe other live games that are currently being played.
- Chat with other players.
- Get a glimpse of your correspondence games on your home screen with a widget.
- Receive notifications when it is your turn in correspondence games.
- Beautiful dark mode.
There are many more features on OGS website that I plan to implement into the app gradually, so I hope to have your support to make it happen faster. Let me know if there is any feature you specifically want to have first.
This app offers subscriptions for supporting the app's ongoing development. If you decide to participate in the subscriptions:
- Payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at the confirmation of purchase.
- The subscription automatically renews unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
- Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period.
- You can manage and cancel your subscriptions by going to your account settings on the App Store after purchase.
- All purchases are final. I cannot issue refunds for purchases charged to your Apple ID.
The Terms of Use can be found at: https://files.honganhkhoa.com/SurroundTerms.html, and the Privacy Policy can be found at: https://files.honganhkhoa.com/SurroundPrivacyPolicy.html.
This Utilities game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Surround – Online Go client is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 15th September 2024
Recent improvements include:
Add a setting to hide all player ranks and ratings.
Download & Availability
Surround – Online Go client is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Surround – Online Go client 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:
Cant submit a custom match at all. Used an ipad and iphone, both didnt work.
App was great but now crashes every time we open it. Please assist.
Easiest the cleanest and most beautiful app for the Online Go Server (OGS). Its very responsive, the chat and analysis board work great, and the option to open to the game in the browser is great! If we had two wishes it would be for a dark mode, and the ability to save the SGF from the app, to save on SmartGo One.
Gets the basics down. Main missing feature is push notifications.
Great app, cant believe we didnt hear about it earlier.
This is hands down the best multiplayer app for the game of Go (/ Weiqi / Baduk). It isnt perfect, but it is worlds ahead of GoQuest, Pandanet Go, and others. AND its open source, so you can see exactly what youre getting into.
The app is best used for correspondence games. We like OGS! Note to dev: we deleted the app, and upon redownloading it and signing in we found that we were not able to access the same UI as before we deleted the app. It now is permanently on the web version of the app, and prompts us to log in every time we open the app.
The frustrating bug is the app gets frequently gets stuck in the Reconnecting state which requires a force quit and relaunch. It is especially annoying when we are locked-in to a game, decide on our move, but cannot submit our move because Reconnecting. This bug is a shame because otherwise this app is amazing! Great choices on what to include in the interface versus not. We are a paid subscriber and will continue to be, but hope the Reconnecting bug is fixed someday.
This bug is the only major issue, everything else works great.
This app is fantastic. Its what OGS has needed for a long time. Drawback is that push notifications cost extra (pretty much THE feature if you play correspondence). This is really a shortcoming of OGS though as they dont actually offer a push service. This forces the Surround dev to poll the server and roll their own notification server so they have to offset their costs. The real problem is that the app doesnt load properly. Every time we open the app its stuck in the loading state. You can bypass it with a full restart of the app, but its a pain and feels unfinished. We contacted the dev about it and basically got yeah we know it does that but Im not going to take the time to fix it. Seems like kind of lazy support for an app thats darn near perfect. We want to give this 5 stars, but not until we see a fix. _()_/ In any case, thanks for the good app.
We found this app completely by accident (never came up in search, which is the curse of all Go related things) and it has turned out to be all but perfect. If you play on OGS (or want to but youre turned off by the interface) this is all you need. Its an actual free fully featured OGS client, with the only upsell being a tiny subscription fee if you want push notifications for your games. There is currently a very small bug in the chat feature but after emailing the developer Khoa, they responded promptly to let us know it has been fixed in the next release and shared a TestFlight link to download the improved dev version. They are clearly in it for the love and not for the money, so if this review is corny, its only because we feel likes this kind of work deserves some love in return.
We bought this to have notifications for our correspondence games, and it does that nicely. Feels like a native iOS app, not too many frills which is good. Easy to just get into a game using the OGS server.
This app lets you play the games through OGS server in a simple and efficient way. We would give six stars if we could. Thank you for creating this app.
Our only minor complaint is that navigation within the app on the phone can feel a bit unintuitive at times. Besides that, we love it! The app has everything Id want from a mobile OGS client as well as some extras. The widget is a very nice touch.
Functional and attractive client for OGS. Our only feature request: saving settings for custom games. Still love playing on this app.
Ive been using this app for a few weeks. We originally found its Testflight link on OFS Forums. It functions perfectly well and Ive started playing a lot of correspondence games because of it. We love the haptics, push updates, and simplicity of the UI. The dev did really nice work here. Would be cool to get board style preferences eventually.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.3.16
- Size: 19.31 MB
- iOS: 15.5 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, JA, VI
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Hong Anh Khoa]()
Last updated: 15th September 2024 | Genre: Utilities, Strategy | Developer: Hong Anh Khoa