Former Digg Lead Architect Joe Stump’s Blunder Move, a new iPhone development company specializing in board games, has released Chess Wars, an iPhone game that lets you play your Facebook friends in Chess while on the go with your iPhone. Chess Wars uses Facebook Connect for Mobile to directly integrate into the Facebook platform and play via the iPhone. Chess Wars also comes with a built in chat, so you can chat against your opponents while challenging them.
Stump mentions that in the next version of Chess Wars, there will be Push Notification for when new moves are made, direct Twitter integration and TwitPic for public taunting as well as more in depth Facebook Connect integration, like announcing the players moves over Facebook.
Stump also notes that the company is planning to release more board games in the near future, including Checkers and Reversi — both of which use Facebook Connect on the iPhone.
Blunder Move is a side project of Stump’s, not to be confused with Crash Corp, the gaming company he is starting with SocialThing! founder Matt Galligan (the board games were originally going to be released under the Crash Corp label, but after Galligan came on board it was decided to spin them off). Details on Crash Corp. are still scant, but we’ve heard that it’s working on “Alternate Reality Mobile Gaming”, that fuses the real world with fantasy gameplay.
Chess Wars is $0.99 and is available today in the App Store [iTunes Link]. Other notable Chess games for the iPhone include Chess Pro by 99Games Online, and iChess by myMobileApps.
Techcrunch should reverse the posting order of comments so that the most recent show up at the top. Check out TED.
It’s more fun. It democratizes commenting. Everybody gets a little airtime. The way it is now, on highly commented blogs, the first comments get all the attention and the end comments get no attention. It’s like going to the cafeteria and the first guy gets all the food while the rest just get to watch.
On low commented blogs it’s not relevant. On highly commented blogs it’s clearly a violation of the Commenter Bill of Rights.
Also I hate how the link takes me the crunchbase site why? I want to go to *their* site.
Well those are the CrunchBase widgets. Clicking the title takes you to CrunchBase for obvious reasons. But, you can always click their website link the in widget to go directly to their own website.
I agree, there should be a little icon that allows you to jump directly to the site. Throw up a an iframe bar if you really need want to retain the traffic.
I couldn’t agree with you more. +1000000000
TechCrunch has some of the most “interesting” commenters yet the WORST commenting system.
I think it should be reversed by default but there should be more options and the ability to flip the order yourself. They also need a way to find out if your comment has gotten a reply. Oh, and they need a place that you can see everything a commenter has written.
They should just use something like Disqus.
NO !!! If TC wants to add an option to order comments in reverse chronological order, that’s fine. But the default should always be in chronological order. A lot of people reply to others’ comments while staying in the main thread. It would suck if I end up reading replies before the original comment.
There’s a reason sites that rely almost completely on commenting systems stay in chronological order (Think Slashdot, Digg etc) by default.
This app looks awesome! So does the company. I think it will be very successful. The world needs for asyncreous games!!!
This is a brilliant example of how the social web should be. Smart game with a smart implementation, some product development people could take great advice from that
I love the fact that when you play a move it adds it to your notifications and of course that I can pick up the game at anytime
Well done!
One of the greatest developers of all time.
Just downloaded the app and it crashes every time I try to load my contacts. App is not usable in this state. >.<
We’ve gotten a few isolated reports of this. We’re tracking it down and hope to have a fix submitted today or tomorrow. Sorry about this!
I’m getting the same thing.
Add http://www.face...p?id=1810285465 as a friend and this should fix the crashes. We’ll be submitting a new binary today.
Is there going to be an Android Version??
We’re planning on a Flash version that you can play from the web first. We may investigate Android depending on how everything else goes.
Not too sure or confident on how to play chess. That’s sad..LOL
How is this different than Chess with Friends?
I’ve been beta testing this for some time and enjoying the incremental progress while, of course, soaking up the fun playing everyone. The FB Connect creates a seamless environment where I can add friends and engage 25-40 friends simultaneously through games, talking trash to each via the in-game text messaging too! Great way to stay connected and enjoy the world’s greatest board game!
good to know that “one of the greatest developers of all times” even writes apps that crash.
phew… i feel better now
looks cool and facebook integration is smart.
Oh, man, if you think this is bad you should see some of my other screwups! I’ve had much bigger “blunders” than this. HA! A pun.
Finally! A way that I can school my friends in chess on the go.
If you want a free app that does exactly what this does except is more awesome try chess with friends.
Other notable chess apps…no Chess With Friends? TechCrunch has the attention span of a house fly: http://www.tech...network-effect/
Stump is a Stud! Nice work Joe.