We’ve just gotten a sneak peek at Chess With Friends, a new iPhone application that is due to appear on the App Store within the next few days (pending Apple’s approval process). There are already a number of chess games available on the App Store, but most of these require that games be played out in one long session, or are played through Email with strangers. Chess With Friends is taking a different approach, offering turn-based asynchronous sessions with people in your contact list that will likely appeal to a much broader user base by more effectively leveraging the iPhone’s untapped network effect.
Chess is a hugely popular game but most people don’t have time to play it for hours at a time – a fact that is especially apparent when you’re trying to find a friend who has long enough to play a match. To deal with this, Chess With Friends just asks you to make a move at a time at your leisure, which your friend can respond to hours or even days later. You can also keep multiple games going at the same time (visible in a scrollable list). The result is reminiscent of the massively popular Scrabulous Facebook app (now called Lexulous) that allowed users to play multiple turn-based Scrabble games at the same time, choosing new moves at their convenience.
Unfortunately the app has one serious flaw: there currently isn’t any easy way to figure out if it’s your move – you’ll need to periodically open the app yourself. This would be a non-issue if Apple had made good on its promise to release a background Push Notification system by September, but the company missed the target date and has been mum about the feature’s launch. After the MobileMe fiasco it’s clear that Apple wants any future cloud-based features to be perfect, but the lack of Push is proving to be a severe handicap to both networked games and social networks.
Now, they need to port this over to Android so I can play against my friends that have it.
Asynchronous chess?! That’s an oxymoron.
they’re boosted the interestingness by replacing the classic
name for this kind of chess which is: “Correspondence Chess”.
I see they’re taking the itsyourturn.com method of play. It should be interesting to see how this develops.
I also have two Chess apps out for the iPhone. Random Chess (for which I sent an update to Apple today) generates a random opening position for you to play with friends on a real board. Chess Player has a collection of 10,000+ high-rated games which you can watch at random.
I think it would be interesting if they added a chess clock – a timer for each player – that way the games can be played in real time under short time constraints for both players.
There’s a connect 4 game on the AppStore that already does this. You can play against people in your contact list, or even your Facebook friends. It’s asynchronous, and your friends who don’t have an iPhone can play through the Facebook version of the app. The game is called Social Line Connect. The game SMSes when you’ve been challenged or if it’s your turn.
Excellent idea. I have no need for an iPhone since I just got a new phone, but I do wonder if this can be done between iPod touch and iPhone? anyone know?
Yes, it should work. They both run the same applications. The only difference is that iPod Touch users will need to be connected to Wi-Fi to update their moves.
nice idea …not sure if its new or not but very cool
definately not gona work for me
wont even remember my strategy after a few hours
This one might be more to your liking:
http://www.vide...Chess-for-Girls
Hahahaha…. that’s mean, but funny =)
i’m gonna get it, it seems good
Surely all the developer needs to do is to use email from the application to inform your opponent that it is their move, rather than waiting for Apple to release Push Notification.
Apple seem implement stuff that people really want at a snail’s pace. It took them a year to be Exchange compatible and even then they didn’t implement Tasks, which is a gaping hole.
I love my iphone… and I’m a Microsoft fan boy ! but it seems to me that they give you stuff that they think you will want rather than listening to what people actually want. For the most part the strategy seems to work because the device is awesome but if they paid attention to their users it would be unbeatable.
This is awesome…I think most of the cooler games coming out will have online play between iphones and even facebook apps, android, etc.
Damn. I need to buy iPhone before christmas.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
You can play turn-based chess and other games on iPhone via Little Golem server, where is already thousands players, rating systems, tournaments.
Blog about it: http://www.litt...og.jsp?blogid=6
iPhone pages: http://www.litt...olem.net/iphone
This is so fun to play. I love this game!
it’s kind of addictive. esp bc of those awesome sound effects.
i hate it because u if u dont have an ipod touch u cant play it it sucks dont do it it crashed my friends ipod touch