Chess vs ChessCam
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chess
Engage in chess matches with a unique AI opponent that converses with you, offering commentary and personality. This offline game features a powerful local LLM for dynamic interactions and a robust chess engine with adjustable difficulty.
- AI opponent with personality
- Local LLM for chat
- Stockfish chess engine
- Adjustable difficulty levels
- Offline play
- Full chess rules
- Animated reactions
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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
ChessCam
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ChessCam turns your phone into a camera that follows a real chessboard. Point it at the board, scan the position and play: every move is recognized and recorded as you play. Play against Stockfish bots on your own board, connect your physical board to Lichess, or record over-the-board games with a friend. Share a live link so others can follow the game on another device, then review every game afterwards with engine analysis. KEY FEATURES • Camera recognition: your moves on a real board become digital moves in real time • Play bots: face Stockfish-based opponents at different levels on your own board • Play on Lichess: use your physical board for online games on Lichess • Record over-the-board games: player names, clocks and the full move history • Clocks: classical, rapid and blitz, with increment, delay and multi-period controls • Fix move: correct a misread move with one tap • Finish by hand: place both kings in the centre to record a win or a draw • Live watch links: let friends follow your game on another device • Analysis and review: key moments, engine evaluation and a mistake deck to practise • History: save, favourite, resume and export games as PGN or FEN • Voice: hear each move announced, hands-free PRIVACY Board recognition runs on your phone. Video is never uploaded, and your games are stored on your device. ChessCam sends anonymous diagnostics (crashes and performance, no moves or images) to help fix bugs; you can turn this off in Settings. If you choose to help improve recognition, ChessCam also sends moves and board images from your camera games without any account or device ID. This is off until you allow it. Game data is only sent to others when you share a game live or play on Lichess.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is device support: ChessCam at 3 against Chess's 1. ChessCam also leads on iOS requirement (14.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Chess | ChessCam |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | — | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 14.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.3 GB | 51 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Adrondak LLC | MARIUS EIDSNES PHILLIPS |
In-app purchases
Chess
No in-app purchases
ChessCam
No in-app purchases









