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So you’re a casual chess fan and you’re looking for a great mobile distraction while on the road, waiting for a car repair or snuggled in bed before sleep. Developer, 99 Games has release two chess games for the iPod Touch and iPhone through the iTunes store: Chess Pro and Chess Lite.

Both the Pro and the Lite versions are based on the same basic game play style, while the Pro is the full blown version Chess Lite offers a lighter gaming atmosphere for a lighter amount of money. You can purchase Chess Lite for USD $.99 cents while the Pro version will run you USD $3.99. Quite honestly, the $3.99 version is worth while if you want to put any real effort into playing chess because it has more styles of play, better graphics and, most importantly, the ability to chose difficulty levels. The Lite version is designed for casual play, we’re not sure what the difficulty setting is for this release.

The Lite release has minimal graphics, very flat and 2D while the Pro version has a rich 3D look and feel to the game environment. For all intensive purposes, we’ll talk more to Chess Lite Pro as this has the most bang for the buck and all the features at your finger tips.

Chess Pro Graphics

You’ll find three variable difficulty settings: easy, medium and hard. New chess players will want to jump right into ‘easy’ mode and start learning the ropes. You’ve never played chess? That’s completely fine because the game will help you along by showing you the moves that are valid for the specific game piece in question. There is also a hint button you can click if you’re really lost as to what a good next move may be. Word of warning, we’ve used the hint button through an entire game and lost badly so, take the hint as just that… a hint.

Hardcore chess players will probably not want to see all the legal moves a specific piece can be made, this can be disabled in the options menu. By turning off legal moves, you’ll naturally increase the difficulty level of game play because you’ll be on your own for where you can placing the piece. Naturally, you can push up the difficulty level as you become more familiar with the game and find a better challenge. You’ll know the game is working its magic as even the iPod Touch gets warm after playing a bit of Chess Pro.

This game is all about playing on-the-go so you’ll find you can save your progress at any time with up to five save slots and resume when you’re ready to play again. While playing through a move, you’ll notice a timer up near the top right counting up your play time, this will give you a good idea of how long it is taking you to defeat the opponent. How fast can you defeat the CPU?

There is a local two player mode which allows you to hand over the mobile device to a friend to play their move. After your turn is over, the board will animate and “flip” so the next player can make their move. This is great if you’ve got a competitive itch with a friend or spouse and don’t want to pull out a real game board. We’d rather not have the board flip, though, since it’s very easy to play the device on the table with a player at both sides, the flip would be great if was an optional setting.

Chess Lite Graphics

The touch style of play works well with chess as we’re all used to playing chess by moving game board pieces. For our big finger friends, this may prove to be a slight challenge as the game board is pretty small. If you’ve got the finger dexterity to type on the iPhone/iPod keyboard you’ll have no problem with Chess Pro or Chess Lite, but their seems to be no way to zoom in if you’re big finger challenged. There is an undo button for those that mis-slide or otherwise mess up their move (don’t use it to cheat!)

There are two variants to the standard game of chess: Suicide and Losers. In the suicide variant, you’re goal is to be the player with no pieces left on the board or have no legal moves left. This sounds easy for those that are not good at Chess but it’s harder to lose than you think. You’re forced to capture your opponents piece if the chances arrives, so you can’t just sit idle and lose because they’re going to try to lock you into capturing them. Losers variant is similar to suicide but the player who loses their king will automatically lose the match, much like standard chess.

You’ll find the Pro version also arrives with three game skins or “themes” to play. You can use the hardwood chess pieces, the silver metallic pieces or the 2D pieces you’re stuck using with the Lite version of the game.

Hardcore chess hobbiests or competitive players may find this game lacking in certain areas we’re sure, but for the rest of us “normal people,” this proves just the distraction we need on the go. It plays well, looks polished, contains variants for those that get bored of standard play and costs less than $5.00. It’s hard to argue with that!

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