The Queen's Gambit Chess game on Netflix fails to live up to the TV series
In late 2020, Netflix contributed to a huge boom for chess with the release of The Queen's Gambit, featuring Anya Taylor-Joy as chess prodigy Beth Harmon. Nearly three years on, the streamer has launched The Queen's Gambit Chess, a game based on that miniseries.
The world of chess has moved on and grown since then. This year, Chess.com hit 10 million active players in a single day for the first time.
In April, a peak of 570,000 viewers saw the climax of the men's World Chess Championship as Ding Liren became the new world champion.
The Queen's Gambit Chess positions itself as a title for everyone from absolute beginners to seasoned players, but with Chess.com and a wealth of educational chess media out there, the Netflix game's aimless and clunky execution means that it fails to offer much of value.
Perhaps the most unique part here is that you complete puzzles and play games in several of the locations seen in the TV series, from playing Mr Shaibel in the basement of girls' orphanage Methuen Home to facing off against grandmaster Vasily Borgov in Moscow.
And to be fair, the environments do look pretty, even if it's difficult to tell pieces apart with some of the 3D chess sets.
The problems start to arise when it comes to the actual chess. The campaign is split into three difficulties, the easiest of which starts off with the very basics, such as how to move a rook or bishop.
Unfortunately, we played through the whole campaign at the highest difficulty and came away feeling like anyone who is experienced and plays chess at an intermediate level will find the puzzles underwhelming.
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The vast majority of 'Mate in 3' puzzles in the first half are just variations of back-rank mates, and it's not until the final two areas, where sacrificing pieces is required, that they start to get a little interesting. Meanwhile, puzzles revolving around finding discovered checks, capturing a set number of pieces, and memorising openings provide little challenge.
But what stands out the most is a lack of learning value from playing many of these puzzles.
Generally speaking, puzzles are considered an excellent tool for improving your tactics and pattern recognition, yet the scope and variety of the campaign's puzzles are limited, at least for the more experienced players.
In addition, there are brief lessons on concepts including interference, zugzwang, and windmill sprinkled in, but there are no follow-up puzzles to test the player or reinforce the ideas afterwards. In one lesson, in trying to demonstrate a concept, the 'correct' move is actually a blunder that hangs the queen.
The puzzles where you have to memorise openings is further indicative of this underlying issue. There is no value in learning the first few moves of an opening without understanding the theory and the ideas behind it, yet the game fails to elaborate on any of the openings it showcases beyond the occasional throwaway line.
Playing actual chess games here, online or against the bot, isn't much better. There doesn't seem to be a way to scroll up your move list during ranked games, and while the game tries to tell you how good your move is when you play it, during review, it doesn't provide information explaining its logic.
We also came across moves labelled inaccurate that, when analysed post-game using stronger engines, were confirmed to be more than fine.
In fact, there were occasions where, when we asked for the game to recommend its preferred move via the 'Beth's Vision' ability, it responded by giving the same move we originally played that was deemed 'inaccurate'.
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But the most frustrating part about playing against an opponent is that – in our experience – the app crashed mid-game every single time. We don't know how widespread this problem is, but we started around 30 games in total across online and offline and across two different devices (iPad Air 2020 and iPhone 12) and failed to finish one without interruption.
There is an option to resume games, and while we could continue offline games against the bot after restarting, it was a different case for online.
On several attempts following an online crash, and knowing we hadn't run out of time on the clock yet, we tried re-joining the game – only for the app to instantly crash when the position loaded.
At least the app is free provided you're a Netflix subscriber, so you can try online without much risk and see if the problem affects you. Be warned that the crashes do make online completely unplayable.
Even without the technical issues, The Queen's Gambit Chess is an unsatisfying experience if improving your chess ability is the primary aim.
While the game likes to think there's something for players of all skill levels in here, in reality its only notable feature is the backdrop inspired by the show.
It feels like a missed opportunity, arriving a couple of years too late to take full advantage of Beth Harmon's popularity and the mass numbers of new players that came from that. But even if the release were more timely, as a learning tool it falls significantly short, lacking a clear enough vision in its puzzles and features to steer players in the right direction.
Platform reviewed on: iOS
The Queen's Gambit Chess is out now on iOS and Android via Netflix.
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