nvChess Demo

Chess is by far one of the most popular games in the world, especially since it is played at the highest levels and it involves a lot of practice and cunning. Many legends have left their mark on the game over the course of history, such as Bobby Fischer or Garry Kasparov, who have shown the world new moves and strategies.

nvChess is a technological experiment that aims to demonstrate the capabilities of the new DirectX and shader technologies, although the game itself is not in any way original nor extensive. Thus, beside the fact that it looks really good and you've got a few skins to choose from for the board and the pieces, it is basically pure chess with no other gimmicks involved.

As far as the aforementioned skins are concerned, they are designed to show off various technologies, including shading, texturing and illumination techniques, as well as smooth shadows in real-time. While the first skin, 'Sky', is not really all that different from a normal chess board, the other two, 'Fire & Ice' and 'Holographic' are slightly more surreal, featuring unusual piece design and plenty of special effects.

To start off with, the game provides you with a few very basic AI algorithms, which cannot really come up with a valid chess strategy, nor properly defend against your tactics. However, as you win more matches and move on to the slightly more difficult matches, the computer gets better and better, while becoming almost unbeatable at the highest setting.

Unlike the other games that depict the sport, the one at hand makes no effort to include any type of tutorial, learning books or famous matches to look at, since it does not contain a database at all. Thus, you must already be familiar with chess in order to play it, although that should not be a problem for most people out there.

In the end, nvChess has been developed as a tech demo, rather than anything else, which should excuse the lack of content and detail when it comes to the game itself. However, the mechanics are still very functional and it does feature the option for human versus human matches, although only on the same computer.