Zinda Chess plays offline with no account and no internet, and its pieces are alive

You want a game of chess on your phone, and the phone is offline: a flight, a basement, a commute through dead zones, a data plan you are rationing. Or you are connected, but you do not want to hand over an email address just to play the computer for ten minutes. Mobile chess often treats a sign-in and a live connection as the price of entry, and the practice you meant to do quietly does not happen.

Zinda Chess is the chess game we build for Android, and offline play is a first-class part of it rather than a fallback. Games against the computer, a 60-level campaign, 50,000 puzzles and two-player games on one phone all run with no account and no internet, and your streaks keep counting while you play them.

It is also a game with a point of view. Its tagline is “Chess, but alive.” Zinda is the Hindi and Urdu word for alive, and in our game every piece is a character and every capture can play out like a scene from a film, on top of a full-rules game of chess.

What you can play with no account and no internet

Offline in Zinda Chess means the whole single-player game, not a cut-down demo of it. Install the app, open it, and four ways to play are there before you have typed a single detail about yourself:

• vs Computer, with 6 difficulty tiers and 15 strength levels.
• Campaign: 60 levels across 6 worlds, with 6 bosses.
• Pass & Play: two players sharing one phone.
• Puzzle World: Puzzle Path, Daily Puzzle, Streak mode, Rush practice and 6 boss packs.

Streaks work offline too, so a week of puzzles on a phone with no signal still counts as a week. An account only comes into the picture when you want to play real people, and that side of the game is for adults. Everything in the left-hand column below is yours without it.

The computer opponent, and two players on one phone

Against the computer you choose from six difficulty tiers and fifteen strength levels. That is a lot of room between a first game and a genuinely hard one, and it matters most when the computer is the only opponent available, which on a flight or a long rail journey it is. You can stay at a level until it stops being a challenge and then step up, without needing anyone else online to find you a match.

Underneath the characters and the film-style captures, this is real chess with the full rules, not a toy that approximates the game. The animation is a layer on top of a proper engine for play, and you can turn it off when you want nothing but the position in front of you.

Pass & Play covers the other common offline case: two people, one phone. It needs no account either, so handing the phone across a table is the entire setup.

Sixty campaign levels, six worlds, six bosses

The campaign gives offline play a direction. It runs to 60 levels across six worlds, with six bosses to face along the way, and like everything else on the offline side it needs neither a connection nor a sign-in. Boss fights give the run a shape: there is always a next level waiting and a bigger opponent ahead.

A campaign suits the way people actually play on a phone without signal: in short sessions, picking up where they left off. Rather than starting a fresh game against the computer each time and choosing a strength level from scratch, you open the app and carry on with the next level in the world you are working through.

Puzzle World: 50,000 puzzles that work offline

Puzzle World holds 50,000 puzzles, and every one of them works offline. They are organised into separate modes rather than one long list, so there is a different way in depending on how much time you have and what kind of pressure you want:

• Puzzle Path
• Daily Puzzle
• Streak mode
• Rush practice
• Six boss packs

Because streaks work offline, a daily habit survives a bad connection or a week away from Wi-Fi. Rush practice sits on the offline side and needs no account. Ranked Puzzle Rush, with its weekly top 10, sits on the online side, so it follows the same sign-in and age rules as the rest of online play. Practising on the train and competing at home is a perfectly good way to use both.

Living pieces, and capture scenes you control

The pieces in our original themes are characters, with faces that move and react. Pawns breathe and blink, knights leap, and kings panic when they are in check. In the Sketchbook theme the pencil-drawn pieces follow your finger with their eyes as you move it across the board.

Captures can play as small films: slow motion, a camera zoom and a freeze-frame on impact. Each character theme fights in its own way. Sketchbook captures are comic-book style, complete with a KABOOM. Sumi-e Ink is calm brush and ink, with samurai strikes, enso circles and a vermilion seal stamped on every capture. Battle Toons is cartoon warriors with swords, hammers and wands.

None of this gets in the way of the game. If you are mid-game and want to keep the tempo up, tap anywhere and the scene is skipped. If you would rather never see them, the cinematics can be switched off, and what remains is full-rules chess.

Themes: four in the live version, five classic boards coming soon

Version 1.3, the one on Google Play now, includes four themes, all of them Zinda Originals with living pieces and capture cinematics: Sketchbook, Sumi-e Ink, Battle Toons and My Arena. My Arena is the build-your-own theme, where you choose the board, the heroes, the weapons and the sounds yourself.

Version 1.4 is built and in testing, and it adds five Classic themes for players who want a normal, quiet board: calm, quick, no cinematics, and quiet real-board sounds. That takes the total to nine. Until 1.4 reaches Google Play, the Classic set is coming soon rather than available, and anyone who wants plain chess today can switch the cinematics off in the live version.

Online play: adults only, and chat nobody can use for insults

Signing in opens the online side of Zinda Chess, which is for adults aged 18 and over. It covers both casual games with people you know and rated play against strangers:

• Quick Match: rated games against real players.
• Play a Friend: join by a 6-letter code or an invite link.
• Challenge a friend directly from your friends list.
• Ranked Puzzle Rush, with a weekly top 10.
• Weekly league and leaderboards.

We designed online play to be friendly. Chat is ready-made messages only, so nobody can type insults at an opponent. And each player sees the game in their own theme: you can play in Battle Toons while the person across the board sees the same game in Sumi-e Ink.

What you need to get started

Zinda Chess runs on Android 7.0 or newer. It is free to download, it has no ads today, and it is in English. The download is roughly 30 MB on most phones; the Google Play listing shows the exact size for yours. The live version is 1.3.0, and 1.4.0 is built and in testing. It is Android only for now: an iPhone version is planned, but it is not available.

For screenshots, the full theme line-up and the latest on releases, see the Zinda Chess product page on our site.

1. Check your phone

   You need Android 7.0 or newer and room for a download of roughly 30 MB.

2. Install it

   Get Zinda Chess: Online & Offline on Google Play. It is free to download.

3. Play offline straight away

   The computer, the campaign, Pass & Play and Puzzle World all work with no account and no internet.

4. Sign in only for online play

   If you are 18 or over and want rated games, friends, Ranked Puzzle Rush or the weekly league, create an account then.

Questions