Hi everyone! You might recognize us as the publisher of some awesome indie titles on Xbox One, including Pure Pool, Pure Chess, and Stick It to The Man. I’m here today to reveal that Chess Ultra, a brand-new game from Ripstone, is coming to Xbox One this spring!

Chess Ultra is a sequel to our original hit chess game Pure Chess, and has been built completely from the ground up by the internal development team here at Ripstone. We’ve reached a level of visual fidelity that is not just a massive improvement on the original title in every way, and thanks to HDR and the power of Xbox One S, we think Chess Ultra is the best-looking chess game in the world!

Xbox One S owners will be able to experience the game with crisp, beautiful HDR visuals that we’re incredibly excited about. A whole variety of environments and chess sets in Chess Ultra look gorgeous in HDR, as you can see from the screenshots and the teaser trailer above. Our artists have worked unbelievably hard to make sure that when you play Chess Ultra, you’re blown away by how stunning every inch of the game looks and feels. Running at a silky smooth 60 frames per second with textures beautifully rendered using PBR (physical based rendering), this really is something special to see in action.

Chess Ultra features a huge variety of game modes, and we’ll be talking about those in more detail later. What I really want to focus on today is the brand-new online system we have developed for the game. We listened to your feedback following the launch of Pure Chess, and the Ripstone development team have crafted an intuitive online mode for Chess Ultra that we think you’ll be happy with. When you take the game online, you’ll be able to play against your friends and any other Chess Ultra players on Xbox One across the globe.

Want to see how the game plays? We’ll be hosting a livestream on Twitch via our Ripstone Games channel on Monday, February 27 at 8am PST. We’re letting the audience play Chess Ultra against a Grandmaster by entering commands into the chat, and taking questions about the game. Check it out!

There’s plenty more to talk about in the coming months before launching this spring, including some pretty big surprises that we’re really looking forward to sharing with you. We can’t wait for you guys to play! For more news about Chess Ultra, be sure to stay tuned to Xbox Wire and follow us on Twitter.