Comparison

Kishmat vs Chess

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Kishmat

Features
Read full description

Kishmat is a chess app for playing on the same iPhone or iPad. Play against another person locally, or switch to Solo mode and play against the built-in computer opponent. The Solo engine searches legal chess moves on the device and shows a live visual of the search while it thinks. You can choose Eco, Mid, or Max power depending on how much time you want the engine to spend per move. No accounts, no tracking, no ads, and no in-app purchases. Features: - Local two-player chess - Single-player Solo mode - Adjustable engine power - Live search visualization - Legal move highlighting - Undo, reset, and board flip - Check, checkmate, and stalemate detection - Castling, en passant, and pawn promotion

About

Chess

Features
Read full description

Chess-Buddy is a chess game where your computer opponent also talks with you using a powerful local LLM, Qwen 3 trained at 1.7 Billion parameters. This Chat system has been wrapped and designed to conform to this game giving a dynamic personality to the gameplay that feels alive and rich with a friendly buddy to play with. I like playing chess on my phone but I really like playing with a person. This isn't quite as nice as playing casual chess with a friend but it's pretty nice. Play chess against a real engine (the chess side of the AI is running on stockfish, the leading open source chess engine that everyone agrees is really great, with also selectable difficulty levels). After almost every move, Buddy reacts — with a short line, a funny face might happen, and occasionally a little shade. You can chat freely between moves too. Buddy will respond. It's less like playing against a computer and more like playing against a friend who happens to be very good at chess but awkward at conversation, Not to say it is a bad chat LLM it's just not set up to work like a personal assistant anymore, the conversation is with a LLM that is essentially now Chess-Buddy. Everything runs on your phone. No internet required. No account. No ads. No subscription. The chess engine and Buddy's brain are built in. --- CHESS • Full rules: all legal moves, castling, en passant, pawn promotion with a piece picker • Four difficulty levels — Friendly (800), Casual (1200), Competitive (1600), Expert (2200) • Undo moves and reset anytime • Game saves automatically — pick up exactly where you left off BUDDY • Reacts to the game with short, personality-driven commentary • 11 animated face states — Buddy goes mindblown when something wild happens • Chat freely: ask for help, vent about your last move, just hang out • Runs entirely on-device with a local AI model — no data leaves your phone DESIGN • Bright, friendly, cartoon — not a dark chess robot • Tap or drag pieces, whichever feels natural • Haptic feedback for captures, check, and checkmate • One screen. No menus to get lost in. ChessBuddy is made by Adrondak LLC. Chess engine: Stockfish (GPL v3) — stockfishchess.org Personality model: Qwen3-1.7B (Apache 2.0) — Qwen Team / Alibaba Cloud Inference runtime: llama.cpp (MIT) — Georgi Gerganov

Screenshots

Kishmat1 screens
Chess4 screens

Verdict

The call

Kishmat and Chess are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Kishmat versus Chess: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterKishmatChess
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—2 — better
Update frequencyEvery 4 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB1.3 GB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperArash ParniaAdrondak LLC

In-app purchases

None

Kishmat

No in-app purchases

None

Chess

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Kishmat free?
Kishmat is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Chess free?
Chess is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Kishmat or Chess have ads?
Neither Kishmat nor Chess shows ads.

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