Hello, old friends, I am your old driver. I am a 35-year-old gamer. I have played chicken from red and white consoles to mobile phones. I thought I had never seen any big storms, but today I fell into an "old antique" - yes, it is chess, and it is a free Android version.
Don't paddle away in a hurry, hear me out. Well, this game has no flashy graphics, no special effects, and it's not even worthy of a little girl guiding a newbie. But it forced me to play from 8pm to 2am, and my wife almost threw my phone out of the window. Why? Because the smell is so authentic!
I remember that when my grandfather played chess, he would draw lines on a cement board and use bottle caps as chess pieces. He could sit under the shade of a tree all afternoon. There were no smartphones at that time, and even game consoles were luxury goods. Chess was the most hard-core "e-sport". It focused on memorizing chess records and counting moves. A "hindsight" could last a whole year.
What now? The gaming industry is booming. When you open your mobile phone, you will be able to draw cards with krypton gold and fill the screen with light effects. The price is 9,999, so you can play faster with less clothing. But look at this chess, the developer "Wuhan Duobit" doesn't know what to think. It's free, has no ads, and doesn't require the Internet - are there any games these days that can be played without the Internet? I thought it was a pirated version, but it turns out that it is a real offline artifact. On the subway, in the elevator, or when squatting in a pit, you can take out your phone and fight the AI for 300 rounds.
Don't underestimate this AI, it's called "insidious". I chose the intermediate difficulty level, and I fought with it in a "straight-forward vs. sideways" battle at the beginning. It actually didn't follow the routine and directly abandoned its horse to attack, which almost forced my veteran to jump into the Chu River. It was then that I remembered that the last time I played chess seriously was 20 years ago. I drew the chessboard on the back of my math textbook, played with my deskmates using erasers, and the loser was rewarded with spicy chips - now that I think about it, that was much more exciting than playing chicken and losing points now.
The "endgame challenge" and "classic start" modes in this game are simply a time machine for veteran players. You can see all kinds of legendary killing methods: double rooks, hindsight, fishing horses... As I was playing, a line from Black and White in "The Swordsman" suddenly popped into my mind: "The chess game is like life, if you make one careless move, you will lose the whole game." How many of the reskinned mobile games nowadays can help you figure out this philosophy of life?
What makes me even more emotional is that when young people today mention chess, their first reaction is that "grandfathers played it". But if you look at those who are engaged in AI algorithms, who doesn't use Go and chess as a testing ground? This thing is a living fossil in the gaming world. From the "Liubo" of the Qin and Han Dynasties to the "Xiang Opera" of the Tang and Song Dynasties, and now you can play it with just one click on your mobile phone. The rules have not changed, what has changed is the carrier.
In the past, if we wanted to play a game, we had to save up pocket money to go to the game arcade, or secretly move the TV at home to the bedroom to connect the Famicom. At that time, if there was a little bully in your family, all the kids in the alley would call you Big Brother. What now? There are hundreds of games on your phone, and you have to delete them if you don't have enough memory to play them. But what really allows you to calm down and play a game is chess, which doesn't cost you any money and effort.
Seriously, this game is for everyone. There is a prompt function for novices, and expert AI for veterans. When you are free, you can kill time with the computer, and when you are lazy, you can open the endgame and use your brain. The most amazing thing is that there is no time limit. You can hang up and go to make a bowl of noodles, and when you come back, the chess pieces are still waiting for you - this is a refreshing change in the mobile game circle where "limited time activities" and "anti-addiction" are frequently used.
A few words of sincerity at the end. In recent years, the gaming industry has indeed made great strides in technology, from pixels to 4K, from stand-alone to cloud gaming. But sometimes I always feel that the more flashy something is, the easier it is to make people bored. On the contrary, it is like chess. It has a wooden chessboard and a mobile phone screen. The red and green chess pieces click here and there. It is simple but you will never get tired of playing it. It is like the Central Perk in Friends. No matter how the world changes, there is always a cup of coffee waiting for you.
Okay, without further ado, I will start another round of "Endgame Challenge". If I don't win this round, I won't sleep!If you veterans have also played, please report in the comment area, and we will kill two online - of course, don't curse anyone who loses, after all, the most important thing for us veterans is the chess quality, hehe. 😎