CHESS WITH A BONER

Whoa, how did I miss this? An erotic chess video game? Set in a post-apocalyptic world? With (and I quote the press release) “the possibility to actively guide each combination of pieces to a compelling digitized climax”? And a prequel set in Egyptian mythology? Fourteen years in the past, my 13-year-old self has just been delivered a boner from the future.

Behold Lovechess Salvage, the game currently causing Bobby Fischer’s zombie to claw at the roof of his coffin buried deep in the Icelandic permafrost.

Like Toy Story, but with more cock, Lovechess is a terrifying mess of uncanny-valley sex. It’s the pride of developers Artmunk, another in a long line of game developers who have been trying to make chess less boring for the past decade. Although the fact that chess games are cheap and easy to make was probably a draw.

There are some redeeming qualities to Lovechess though. Like how the pawns, with their gas-masks and tattoos, are so excited by the all the action they just start jacking and jilling off right there on the board. It’s cute. Oh, and in the original Lovechess: Age of Egypt, you can watch Horus munch off Anubis, which is really neat if you were into Egyptology as a kid.

But Lovechess Salvage isn’t just a deep and stylish chess game. Nuh-uh. When you capture a piece and essentially, well, rape it, you initiate a little orgasm mini-game. It’s a bit like that one where you chop wood in Fable II, except this time your girlfriend won’t walk in the room and say, “You’re chopping wood in a video game? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” before crying.

Go buy it!

MIKE STERRY