It combines the most popular game in the world involving strategy and studying with a fps team-style shooter all about skill. This game has something for all audiences, everyone from the chess die-hards to those born and raised on clicking heads and everyone in between. I love this game to death, the fact that this is a student project makes me enjoy it more.

If it hadn't been for it being a student project, however, I'd have a lot of gripes with the game. There are so many glitches that affect gameplay to the point where it is laughably bad. I can't get angry at the game; just every time the king disappears or the game would just crashes it makes me a little sadder that the best game ever made (on paper) isn't fully brushed up yet.

The most visible issue with the game is the terrible power imbalance between the pieces. While this could be part of the idea of making the game fairer for casual players, it renders the game boring and unfun to play. The rook and the pawn blow the rest out of the water. The rook gets an instant transportation method like something out of Dragon Ball and a glitchy wall that has its hitboxes extended. In the last game I played, the opponent rook placed a wall on the bookshelf and it fell on the ground, but its hitbox still stood there and it ate up my knight arrows as I was trying to shoot it (I still won this game). On top of this, the rook can end the game in an instant with a weapon that kills every piece in the game with one hit. The other piece that I mentioned that was imbalanced is the pawn. The pawn from FPS Chess might be the greatest case of a chemical X I've ever seen. The weapon of the pawn is the fairest aspect of the piece but it still can kill you in a few headshots with its hitscan rifle. Pawn's running ability is, by accident, the best ability in the game. If you shift and unshift you can fire a shot with basically no lag while still running. Every single piece struggles to hit the pawn leading to the pawn just running away the entire game. If you are on the ground vs a pawn his clone becomes another threat that can also kill you, but if you have climbed above the table, then his clone is rendered useless. All of my pawn vs pawn matches feel like they take as long as an actual chess game because both players will be on the highground shooting and missing, then blocking and healing up when low HP. It doesn't help that there are more pawns compared to any piece, but I guess that's been the case for more than a thousand years now.

Don't get me wrong-- I still love this game. It makes me forget I have a 300 ELO on chess.com and every headshot I hit with the knight makes me feel like I'm as smart as Magnus Carlsen. FPS Chess is already massively popular with it being free, it is played by numerous streamers, and the current chess obsession that has taken hold in 2023, but it can be something even greater if the bugs get fixed and the pieces are balanced better.