Square Off Chess- Play & Learn

Amazing

The overall experience is good. But I miss some features. First of all the kingdom set does not support yet the broadcast option. Secondly I would love to have the ability when playing against the computer to chose a specific opening to be played (like fritz) If possible I would also love to have the ability to set up a position against the computer and play from there.

If this app and board worked, it’d be amazing. As it is, the pieces slide—the board never really flattened out for me, the moves aren’t always recorded accurately, and there are no ways to adjust moves—you have to resign or pause/quit. I first had issues with the five free AI games—all but one glitched so I couldn’t finish any of them except the last one. Then, I had to pay to play the AI. I subscribed for $29/year, but it didn’t register on my app, the free trial registered, but now I’m trying to find a way to cancel my paid subscription. This is all frustrating since no one wants to give back $, I’m on a scavenger hunt for answers. Customer support is not helpful, I got a robo-email response saying SquareOff was acquired by Miko and to wait for further updates. Great. I’m over this ridiculous concept—it could’ve been great but it’s too buggy and frustrating. Do the old-school board w/pieces, so much simpler.

The square off app, which is required to use most of the functions of the square off board is awful. I stopped using it over a year ago and just recently got back on to see if any of the issues have been fixed, and they have not. Still very buggy. If you enter a game, your opponents time does not automatically start. They can just sit and there is still no way to abort the game, so you just have to resign. I’m not sure if this is a strategy by player to increase their rating or if they are legitimately having connectivity issues, but it happens quite often. The app is basically unusable. Any ratings higher than a 2 star have got to be fake. Please download the app and take a look before you buy any of the square off products. There are so many better options on the market now.

Good app though

We love our grand kingdom set. It’s been going on strong for 5 years. The app, however has a big concern from me. My son has an account to learn chess and play with the board. He is getting inappropriate messages that say “Hi”. Luckily, he cannot open them! However, there are no options to block or delete them! There should be a way to deactivate messaging in the app, but there is not. Also, as a side note, I wish there were a way to use the app (he has a Plus account) with a pass and play feature to play chess with someone next to you without the board. Seems like an easy thing to do and overlooked by the developers.

Board doesn’t hold a charge and never connects. Not sure much else I can say. It’s barely usable whenever I try to use it

Sometimes the board just loose travk of pieces and pass one over the other needing manual help, later it just stops responding

Unfortunately, very clunky interface

I have the square off swap which although inconsistent in speed and very cheap feeling works fine if the app decides to actually work. The app is just terrible almost every single game I start I get kicked from the app and “abandon the game” even when streaming (which is the main reason I bought this) i can’t finish a single game. The crashes would at least be almost manageable if you could continue the game after it crashes but you can’t as soon as you get back into the app you have to restart. Stepping away from the bugs the UI itself isn’t great and I find it unfortunate that you are restricted to their app and can’t use chess.com or lichess apps (you can still play games thru those accounts but it goes thru the square off app). Again with the streaming the games are just in a list with no search or filters and you can’t stream past games u less they are in the last day and you can control the stream itself it’s just goes at a constant unchanging speed with no pause or slow and any control at all. Cmon these bugs make the board and app unusable and even if there are no bugs the lack of very necessary normal functions makes it a terrible app. Please fix this stuff as soon as possible and maybe I won’t throw my chess board into a fire.