Chess is one of the most complex and challenging games in the world. Grandmasters have been challenging each other for literally hundreds of years and through all that time, the appeal of the game hasn’t waned. One of the best things about chess is that in addition to the game, there is a plethora of logic puzzles based on it out there as well. With thousands of possible moves, it’s easy to create complex logic puzzles requiring you to think carefully to solve them.
That’s exactly what Unlock The King from Minimol Games is. A collection of chess-based logic puzzles designed to challenge your chess skills. Simply move the pieces around a board to allow the king to reach the end point designated in the puzzle. Sounds easy, right? Well, as it turns out, it is.
Unlock the King presents chess pieces in a modernized way, with glowing almost Tron-like accents in a slick minimalist presentation. A variable-sized board allows the game to control what moves you can and can’t make and all the pieces follow standard chess movement rules. Aside from the board, there is nothing else on screen. The board is rotatable and you can zoom in to see the pieces better.
Simply move the pieces around until the king can reach the end marker, and then the king automatically moves to the end of the puzzle, then the next one loads. That’s all there is to it. It’s one of the least complex chess-based games around, but some puzzles can be mind-numbingly irritating, while others can be solved in only a few moves.
That’s really all there is to Unlock the King. Solve. Advance. Solve. Advance. It’s a simple game that is budget priced for a reason. There’s really no complexity here, no alternate modes, no neat options, no leaderboards, no unlockables. Just 100 chess puzzles, nothing else. Even the settings are minimalist, and the volume on the game’s music is nearly dead silent even at maximum, which is kind of irritating. It’s a little sad that there’s no normal chess mode in the game, just the puzzles one after another with no other depth to the game, but at a buck, what do you really expect, especially from a company whose name is a phonetic spelling of ‘minimal’?
One notable high point of Unlock the King is that it’s fully touch-compatible. So few games remember how versatile the Switch is, so it’s great to just be able to tap the piece I want and where I want it to go and it works like a charm. After undocked play, it was honestly painful to play the game docked and having to manually select each piece one at a time move the cursor and select again to drop the piece.
Unlock the King is a bargain bin game for a bargain bin price. It’s not that it’s bad. Its design esthetic is great, but the gameplay is sadly lacking. A middling chess player can probably blow through the first fifth of the game in under a half hour if they’re focused. If you love chess puzzles with a burning passion, this might be the game for you. Otherwise, chances are good you’ll be better off avoiding this one.
This review was based on a digital copy of Unlock the King provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was noticeably better in undocked mode. Unlock the King is also available on Steam.