Android Market

Chess Walk is my first Android application. I I started developing it in August 2009 and submitted it to Android Developer Challenge 2. It has online and offline mode. In online mode one can play at the Free Internet Chess Server (registration is optional) – there is always someone to play with, several hundreds players are connected at the same time. In offline mode there are these features: difficulty settings, undo move(s), autosave, flip board function and human vs human mode. The chessboard highlights last move and legal squares. Overall I think the interface is very clean and simple. Chess Walk is available on Market, screenshots and more info here: androidchess.appspot.com

Chess for Android consists of a chess engine (derived from BikJump) together with a GUI (thanks to Joseph Wain for designing the chess graphics). The application accepts moves through the touch screen, the trackball, or through the keyboard (viz. e2e4 pushes the king pawn, e1g1 castles king side, etc.). The GUI gives the option to highlight the last played engine move as well as all valid moves for a selected piece during a user move. A pawn promotion prompts the user to define the desired destination piece. The GUI supports an undo feature, where up to eight plies (half-moves) can be taken back to correct mistakes, and recognizes draw by either the fifty move rule or a simplified form of threefold repetition. The engine plays at various levels (including random, against itself in auto-play, or free-play, where the phone can be used as a “magnetic chessboard” to study games or play a game up to a position for further play with the chess engine).