A light review of CyberChess

Cyber Chess is a new game that BinaryX developed, and is currently in testing. I have played the game for a while and here is a short review of this blockchain Auto-Chess game.

GAME INTRODUCTION

In each round, there will be five heroes in the shop being purchasable. After purchasing them, the player can place them onto the ‘chessboard’ where heroes will fight with enemies in the next phase.

Players will receive gold either winning or losing. There will be one extra gold distributed to winners and losers will lose one HP. If a player is experiencing a winning or losing streak, there will be extra gold. If a player has 5x gold, the player will receive one gold per five gold. When players lose all their HPs, they are defeated and out of the game. Victory can be achieved by being the only ones standing.

WHAT MAKES CYBERCHESS UNIQUE

The difference between CyberChess and traditional Auto-Chess is that CyberChess did not universalize heroes’ attributes.

If you have played BinaryX’s previous game, you would know that heroes have attributes such as strength, constitution, intelligence, etc. Their attributes significantly impact how much gold you will be able to earn during quests.

In CyberChess, Heroes have attributes too, and there are some additionaly attributes, HP, Attack, Physical Defense, and Magical defense.

For the beta test, testers will receive 200 gold, which is more than enough for us to summon heroes.

When you summoned a hero, you will see the heroes’ attributes in the upper-right corner.  

Just like any Auto-Chess game, you can upgrade your heroes by purchasing three of the same kind. By then, the upgraded hero will have boosted attributes if it was upgraded from heroes with good attributes. So, it is crucial to have heroes with high attributes. However, select your hero thoroughly, for example, here I have a Ranger with good HP, but don’t put him on the front line! He would not take much fire and can deal a lot of damage in the back. So be careful with the opportunity cost.

Each hero can equip one skill, which can also be obtained from the summoning altar. There are four skills for each kind of hero, and all have different effects. And skills also gain their power through other attributes such as intelligence, strength, etc. Some skills build a tough tank, some create a crazy damage dealer or healer. Arranging the skills differently allows players to win rounds and achieve victory.

Before players join the battlefield, they need to select at most 50 heroes from the collection to participate in the battle, and they can equip corresponding skills for heroes.

Strategy Recommendation

After playing the game for a while it seems to me that the attributes of heroes are much more important than skills. So I recommend spending 150 summoning heroes and spending the rest of the gold on skills.

Doing so will give you 75 heroes and 50 skills. Then I recommend you focus on quantity over quality for now. By this, I mean selecting heroes with the most numbers instead of heroes with the best attributes. The simple reason is that upgrading to lv3 gives you loads of attributes, and you have to maximize your probabilities.

Additionally, upgrading to level 3 is a lot easier than other Auto-Chess games (because there are not many heroes), and heroes gain loads of attributes from it. It is pretty easy to get a couple of lv3 at round 10.

Beyond round 10, however, I recommend players to put more lv2 troops, on the battlefield. For two reasons, there is no lv4 and purchasing slots are pretty cheap compared to upgrading heroes.

There are some skills that I recommend: Healing & AOE. For healing, Holy Light from Knight is a super powerful skill. It has a cooldown of 6s and it does a ton of healing. For damaging skills, AOE is always superior to single target skills. Especially toward the endgame, tanks have loads of defense, and your attackers will always concentrate on the front tank first. In this situation, single-target skill deals little damage, and is hard to eliminate the tank, targeting toward op’s damager will be a much better idea.

For formations, I recommend stacking all your troops at the corner and making the tank in the front to take all the damage.

Overall evaluation of the game

This game is clearly in testing and has a lot to work on. The graphics are not particularly good, the heroes’ motions are kind of stiffy, and some texts are confusing. In contrast to traditional Auto-Chess, CyberChess is reducing a lot of uncertainties. Cards will not be drawn from a global deck, and you get to control your heroes’ attributes and skills. Doing so allows players to ‘build‘ your troops not only in the game, but also outside of the game, which is more strategically intense.

Of course, when it is out of beta, game balancing will be an issue since more capital equals better heroes and better skills. But allowing one to control and individually configure heroes is a lot of fun. If BinaryX can find a balance between finance and game, CyberChess has the potential to achieve marvelousness.