FPS Chess is, as its name suggests, chess, with a first-person twist. Then again, the title also raises a good question: is chess already played in first person? When we sit down to a match, are we assuming the role of a general, surveying the carved pastures of war? Or are we narrators at a third-person remove, telling the story of each piece, as it slides toward ruin or triumph?
The crux of FPS Chess, which released last year on Steam, and which you can download free of charge, is simple. Seated in a warm study (bookshelf, crackling hearth, model train humming over a prairie of carpet), you play a match against someone online: a friend or a stranger. No character sits opposite you, and both your pieces and your opponent's move of their own accord, hopping where you point. Though, it must be said, no actual pointing is done. Unlike Inscryption - another game about a game, which enfolded you in wood and warm darkness but had nastiness on the cards-no hands reach out.
Every time a piece attempts a capture, we cut to first person for the ensuing bout. Battle is joined on the board and off, tumbling from the table onto the chairs and shelves, into the fire, even onto the carriages of the train. At this point, one might presume that any connection to real chess has wobbled off the rails; in truth, it has merely taken an unexpected track. FPS Chess encases the ancient game in the mechanics of the hero shooter, changing the patterns of its play; and in so doing it varnishes the pieces with character, lending their gestures a sharp, familiar purpose. Look at the bishops, brandishing Holy Hand Grenades and gliding, on borrowed wings, into battle. And watch the queen, wielding a Gatling gun and hurling pieces with regal telepathy. Pick a fight with her, and you feel as you did at the approach of a Big Sister, in BioShock 2. The world cracks and panic floods in.
source https://www.eurogamer.net/fps-chess-joins-the-ranks-of-rulebreakers-teasing-new-meaning-from-the-game
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