Show HN: OffChess – Offline chess puzzles app

243•avadhesh18•8h ago

Hi HN!

I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet.

Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess.

OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in 1/2/3/4/5, tactics like pins/forks/skewers, or openings like Sicilian/French, etc). You gain or lose points based on how you perform, so there's a light rating system to keep things engaging.

No accounts, no tracking, no monthly subscriptions, no internet required. Just pure, old-school tactical chess training, wherever you are.

You can check out the iPhone/iPad app at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chess-puzzles-offchess/id67447... or the Android app at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.offchess

Would love feedback, bug reports, or suggestions.

Thanks!

Comments

rprouse•6h ago

The app is full screen on my Samsung mobile so your bottom navigation is underneath the onscreen Android navigation and unusable. Happy to submit an issue and screenshots if you have a GitHub repo.

Other than that, it is working nicely so far.

stavros•6h ago

Same here, there's some text at the top that's below my clock and icons:

https://imgz.org/ibGDKfuf/

avadhesh18•6h ago

That's not supposed to happen, there should be space left for a status bar and a navigation bar. Can you share the make and model of your device?

stavros•6h ago

Yes, it's a Nothing 2.

avadhesh18•2h ago

Fixed, update should be available as soon as Google approves.

stavros•2h ago

Thank you!

patriksvensson•5h ago

Reporting same bug, on Google Pixel 8.

avadhesh18•6h ago

I'm really sorry about your experience. Could you please let me know your device name and screen size? I will make sure to fix this, along with any other bugs people report here and push an update to the app stores by tonight.

avadhesh18•3h ago

Update: I have fixed the issue, the update will be available as soon as Google approves it.

mhitza•6h ago

I have TacticMaster (available on F-droid) but your app looks more polished and will have to give it a try as well.

avadhesh18•5h ago

Nice app and props to you for open sourcing it, thanks for your good words about OffChess.

mhitza•2h ago

Not my app, just a user, credit goes to this person https://github.com/jazzm0

freedomben•4h ago

Neat, just downloaded it off of fdroid. Really cool, thank you!

stavros•6h ago

This is a nice app, but I have one bug report: When I tap on a piece, and it can capture another piece, it looks like it just can't move that way. Capturable pieces should have their background change somehow, to indicate that I can capture them.

Upvoter33•6h ago

That’s more of a feature request not a bug report

avadhesh18•6h ago

Yeah, that’s more me being lazy than an actual bug. I left it like that assuming most people would figure it out anyway — but you’re right, it’s bad design. I’ll add a border around the "capturable" pieces.

stavros•6h ago

Thanks, it left me a bit baffled the first time, as it seemed to say I can't capture the piece, when I knew I could. I tried anyway, and it worked, but it was confusing.

laurentlb•6h ago

Nice project!

As it was not clear from the description, there's a one-time payment (4.29€) to get more than 7 puzzles in a day.

Lichess also offers a good alternative to this, although their offline support is limited.

scotty79•5h ago

To be fair you shouldn't be sitting in the bathroom for that long because you'll develop hemorrhoids.

jaredhallen•5h ago

TacticMaster on F Droid seems to have all the same features for free.

avadhesh18•5h ago

A great app no doubt but the descriptive hints on OffChess and a different rating system set OffChess apart from TacticMaster.

deepdarkforest•4h ago

CT-ART 4.0 is the gold standard. Again, not fully free, but it has some very instructional features, like playing against alternate moves, solving mini versions of a puzzle, playing the opposite side etc. Used it for years.

shric•6h ago

I have an iPhone 16 Pro and there is an annoying delay between tapping a move and the piece moving

avadhesh18•5h ago

Is it the animation of the piece moving? I’ve tested it on a bunch of iOS devices and haven’t noticed anything odd, but I’d love to take a closer look. If you can, please share a video or GIF. It’ll really help. You can email it to me at support@offchess.com. Thanks for trying my app out and giving feedback.

endorphine•5h ago

Where did you get the puzzles from?

McDev•5h ago

If it were my Chess app, I'd get them from the Lichess open database (currently at 5M puzzles): https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles

avadhesh18•4h ago

So did I.

endorphine•5h ago

In my experience, nothing beats the puzzle quality of ChessTempo. Curious how this compares to that.

44za12•5h ago

Cool app. I’ve been thinking of building a similar PWA for a while now, might actually do that.

avadhesh18•4h ago

Even I thought of first making it a PWA too, the only problem is storage of the puzzles database.

modernerd•5h ago

Great start! Gentle feedback:

- Text hints should probably be off by default, they give too much of a hint.

- Auto-advance to next puzzle would be helpful, clicking “next puzzle” gets tiresome.

- Typo in the puzzle categories list: “Egnlish Opening”

avadhesh18•5h ago

1. I enabled them by default because I thought most people won't even know about their existence if they weren't there but if someone is bothered by them they will definitely find the menu item and disable it.

2. I will add an option to enable auto advance in future update.

3. That typo is embarrassing — thanks for catching it! There’s always something that slips through.

mijoharas•31m ago

Nice app (bought the in app purchase).

I went to find the setting (independently of this message, I'd prefer it off by default, but seems fine either way) and I actually can't open the menu, which I assume is the three dots I can see in the top of my phone. It appears to be behind my notification bar?

The Offchess text in the top left is behind my phone's clock as well. Maybe just some padding is needed?

Android 15, Nothing phone 2 if it matters. Message me if you'd like more details.

mijoharas•30m ago

Nvm, probably the same as this I assume: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44500344

atakan_gurkan•5h ago

This alternative: https://github.com/brianch/offline-chess-puzzles is linked from lichess puzzle page.

wery•4h ago

I can't select the settings button on my Pixel 8 :|

avadhesh18•4h ago

I am so sorry about your experience, will be fixed by tomorrow if Google approves the update soon.

kij•4h ago

Nice, bought to replace 'chess tactics puzzles' the addition of rating changes sold me.

Too late did I notice that there is no share fen button. I use that for harder puzzles when I want to understand why a given solution wouldn't work. Mostly just share to Chessis.

avadhesh18•3h ago

Share fen and share pgn buttons will be added in the next update.

tomhow•4h ago

[stub for offtopicness]

eajr•7h ago

Very cool app. Chess.com costs too much and lichess is rather ugly and has barebones puzzle support. I like how you can choose different categories. Will be using this from now on. Btw you have "Egnlish Opening" misspelled.

poloniculmov•6h ago

Try lichess' beta app, it's much more user friendly, even if it's missing a couple of features.

avadhesh18•6h ago

Thanks for your generous reply and Oh my god how did I miss that, will fix in the next update.

tajd•7h ago

This looks really cool! I can't remember what article I was reading the other day but it was advocating for local first software as being the true goal of creating user friendly software -> this app absolutely meet's that goal. Looking forwards to using it.

lucb1e•2h ago

The article from the other day for context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473135

chatmasta•6h ago

Awesome. I’ve never understood why Lichess limits the offline download to 50 puzzles.

djexjms•6h ago

For what it's worth, the entire Lichess corpus of puzzles (over five million positions with solutions and theming tags) is available for download in CSV format at https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles

chatmasta•3h ago

It’s not worth much when I want to use the Lichess app on an eight hour plane ride to solve them :)

I like the feature because it updates my rank when I get internet restored. I just wish they cached more than 50 offline.

bambax•6h ago

Very nice! but why not a webapp as well (for those of us who seldom use their phone and can get bored at the office)?

avadhesh18•6h ago

OffChess website will be soon available in beta with multiple features.

defrost•6h ago

Nice. Any retrograde chess puzzles with this?

avadhesh18•6h ago

Not yet but interesting idea, I might add these as a category in the future.

tangoalpha•6h ago

Nice app. Using moto edge 60 pro. The app navigation gets hidden under the phone navigation icons. I'd like to pay. Except without user login, I am unable to figure out if the purchase can be linkedin to my 2-3 devices (each of which may use a different Google account)

avadhesh18•6h ago

Thanks! A couple of other people in this thread have mentioned that bug too and I'll get it fixed ASAP.

There's no login required since the app uses Google Play Billing on Android and App Store billing on iOS. That also means purchases are tied to the Google account used to buy the app, so unfortunately they can't be shared across different accounts.

I hate the annoyance of apps forcing you to create an account before you even try them and that's exactly why I kept it simple and login-free. But yeah, the trade-off is stuff like what you pointed out. To balance that, I made it a one-time low-cost purchase instead of a subscription. Hope that makes it fair.

lucb1e•2h ago

> There's no login required since the app uses Google Play Billing

...so it requires logging in with a Google account. That means I won't be able to buy the app on my phone

A one-time purchase for an offline privacy-friendly app is 100% fair and the price point and free tier seem great to me (someone upthread said it's like 4.7€ if you want more than 7 puzzles per day iirc), but please just add an option to send you money directly via e.g. IBAN. It's one of the few privacy-friendly options and you also get to keep all of the money

Most other options cut people out: paypal doesn't work half the time ("sorry, something went wrong" when the algorithm hates you today), stripe has issues when your bank and residence country don't match, credit card requires a good credit score, etc. It's all data- and algorithm-based, whereas banks are legally obliged to give you a functional account because it underpins so much of society nowadays. I'd be happy to pay for the app even without using it as a way to add my 'two cents' and hopefully make this more worth your time

krishnasangeeth•5h ago

Hi ,Congrats on the launch.

I built a free iOS app also which has chess puzzles.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knighty-chess-puzzles/id674524...

Would appreciate feedback.

avadhesh18•5h ago

Nice app, I dig the logo.

krishnasangeeth•4h ago

Thanks man. I would also suggest creating a leaderboard with XP for gamification

dan_can_code•5h ago

great app, I like the adaptive style, but one piece of feedback is that, sometimes it is not clear what the goal is. For example, the language "Brilliant queen win ahead!" tells me, right, I am going to checkmate for the win with the queen in this game. But, actually the puzzle is to instead win the queen piece. "win" in chess to me always means checkmate.

Overall great app.

avadhesh18•5h ago

I will change the confusing wording like this but for now I can tell you this, if it mentions a piece by name then the puzzle is about winning that piece and not the game. Thank you for trying the app out.

mansoor_•5h ago

Can you tell us about the tech stack you used and why?

iambateman•4h ago

This is cool! Is there a chess board library that you used or did you have to built it from scratch?

avadhesh18•4h ago

I built the board from scratch but used the awesome chess.js library by Jeff Hlywa for move validation.

yunwal•4h ago

Love the app! Would love it twice as much if you allowed me to turn off the sounds (it turns off any existing podcasts or music).

avadhesh18•4h ago

Thanks for the review, will add a toggle in the next update.

notcrazylol•4h ago

Thank you and God bless you my friend :)

tigroferoce•3h ago

Solo developer, no ads, no subscription. Take my money! And thanks for writing decent software.

diane55•3h ago

Very cool!

avadhesh18•3h ago

Can you please explain what it means? I have been using HN for years and only seeing this for the first time. Seems like some mod action but searching on google didn't return anything.

chatmasta•3h ago

Yes, very strange and I was wondering why my comment which is on topic was added here…

There are other comments which are clearly on-topic, e.g. direct feedback about the app, which have been relegated to this weird sub-thread.

If this is a new feature, I’m not a fan of it. We have downvotes for off-topicness.

ycombinete•2h ago

I’ve seen dang do something similar before to clean up a thread of off topic comments.

tdiff•3h ago

I wonder where were those 100k puzzles sourced from?

GCUMstlyHarmls•3h ago

TacticsMaster on F-Droid also says it has 100k puzzles, sourced from https://database.lichess.org/#puzzles, though that says it has 5 million puzzles, so perhaps 100k is just a coincidence, a nice number, or maybe of the 5m there's a nice subset.

> Generating these chess puzzles took more than 100 years of CPU time.

The page includes a link to the puzzle generator and tagger for interests sake.

binarymax•57m ago

Not OP but generating puzzles isn’t hard if you have a database of games and I’ve done it myself.

For each game just fast forward to the end and ask for Stockfish to provide the solution. If it’s guaranteed “mate in X” then you’ve got yourself a puzzle. You can have a classifier that grabs other puzzle types too (“win the queen in X” for example)

ryanrasti•3h ago

Congrats on the launch!

I was wondering -- how does the point-based rating system work?

avadhesh18•3h ago

It takes both yours and puzzle's rating in consideration while calculating. Just below the chessboard you can see "+12 -10" that means this puzzle will gain you 12 points if you solve this or you will lose 10 points if you fail.

The system is based on ELO with the main difference being that the K factor in OffChess is variable, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

sirjaz•3h ago

Are you going to make a desktop client?

spamalot159•3h ago

Love it! The notification bar on my OnePlus 13 blocks access to the triple dot settings button on the top of my screen. ither than that it's clean.

avadhesh18•3h ago

That's been fixed and the update - as soon as it is approved by Google should be available on play store.

frankfrank13•2h ago

Nice! Quick feedback:

- it plays sound even when my (iOS) device is muted

- would love an option to automatically go to next puzzle

avadhesh18•39m ago

Thanks for your feedback, In the upcoming update I will... 1. add a toggle to disable sounds. 2. add an option to enable auto advance in future update.

lucb1e•2h ago

Note that the discussion continues in the collapsed comment by tomhow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44499848

It says "stub for offtopicness" but, skimming them, literally all comments are on-topic. Not all substantial ('very nice app', 'whats the tech stack?') but a lot of other comments are a normal amount of substantial and also in there... I don't get it, but note that you can expand that subthread

krishnasangeeth•1h ago

I posted this

``` Hi ,Congrats on the launch. I built a free iOS app also which has chess puzzles.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knighty-chess-puzzles/id674524...

Would appreciate feedback. ```

Not sure if that's why it was moved to `stub for off topicness`. I wonder if it is some kind of categorisation logic based on text.

neoromantique•1h ago

For some reason I cannot download it on Android with Aurora Market, perhaps it is too new?

AiAi•1h ago

Thanks for rdx, it’s the way I use reddit nowadays.

I have only used OffChess briefly but one feature request I have is to remove the possible path of the piece when clicking on it (like Lichess).

Another improvement would be the placement of the “next puzzle” button, that seems to be in a crowded place.

avadhesh18•50m ago

Updates are coming to rdx as well and thanks for your feedback on OffChess, will look into your suggestions definitely.

esafak•1h ago

If you would like a chess puzzle book, try Raymond Smullyan's The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights.

https://raymondsmullyan.com/books/the-chess-mysteries-of-the...

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