Story Time Chess is the ONLY game in the world that can teach children as young as 3 how to play chess!

This second installment in our story-based chess series for ages 3+ leads players on an epic journey across Chesslandia, where they’ll discover opening strategy, castling, pawn promotion and game planning. Three engaging workbooks featuring colorful new characters and familiar friends from Story Time Chess help cement new concepts and provide hours of entertainment.

As always, no chess experience is necessary – just open up the storybook and dive in!

This strategy expansion requires the Story Time Chess original game.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the copy of Story Time Chess Level 2 – Strategy Expansion. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

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Review:

Being as universally known and played as it is, Chess needs no formal introduction. However, for the unacquainted, learning this game of unmitigated strategy nevertheless can be a learning curve, especially for children. I previously reviewed Story Time Chess and obtained some pretty stellar results when my children essentially managed to teach themselves the game when paired with the product, but there were still a few concepts that the product didn’t touch upon such as castling and pawn promotion.

Story Time Chess 2 is here to not only impart these new bits of information, but also provide new stories, activities, and strategies to the budding young chess enthusiast. The only question to remain is whether or not the second offering in the Story Time Chess collection can achieve the same type of results that its predecessor did with my children.

Before we delve into these details, however, let us first talk about the materials included :

An Extra Set of Queens

A new rule book to explain more advanced chess maneuvers in typical illustrated story fashion.

An Activity book

A Coloring book

A Puzzle book 

The extra set of queens are similar in design and function to those in the original game, being extremely heavy duty once again, but include two different illustrated standees that are tied into design of the story. These essentially allow for the game materials to creatively explain how and why multiple queens can be acquired in the game.

The game once again uses its narrative in a way that made it easy for my kids (ages 5-6 and 9 at the time of this evaluation, respectively) to learn the new concepts introduced without a hitch. The younger one  even managed to strategically catch me off guard with a castling maneuver when playing against her,  almost immediately after having her older sister teach her the materials. Talk about material that is easy to teach! 

The puzzle and activity books offer some visualized examples of “projecting ahead”, trying to anticipate moves in advance and prevent certain outcomes, or set yourself for an advantage. These situations are beautifully depicted and described, and in theory just what a budding chess master needs.

I did however encounter a few hiccups later on in the review period with my younger one, which could easily be expected given her age. Even though her mind was sharp enough to learn chess from the first product, and to even discover she could checkmate her sister in 3 moves once (I believe this hasn’t been replicated since), she nevertheless was unable to glean much from the puzzle and activity workbooks, given the state of her attention span or current stage of development. Her 9 year old sister was able to siphon a bit of strategy off of the materials, however, and implement some more carefully considered plans and options to her moves that she had difficulty with before, which doesn’t come as intuitively as it does with her younger sibling. She clearly had something to gain from the experience as measured by her improved ability to plan things out and avoid losing as much to her younger (but more intuitive) sibling. 

On the flip side of things, the 5-6 year old did quite enjoy the coloring books, which hopefully can serve as a means to retain what she has learned and bring a smidgeon or two of extra enjoyment in the process. Which still seems to have been the case. 

Are there any negatives to my experience? Aside from my younger daughter’s difficulty to adapt strategies from the materials (which I say is not a fault of the game’s functionality or teaching engine at all, but rather an age-based limitation), I really can’t  find anything to nitpick over. Once again, the folks behind Story Time Chess have created a product that delivers, and we can’t wait to delve into what is up next with Story Time Chess 3!

On a final and side note, I just want to mention that I have no formal association with the team that published this wonderful series of games, so there is no financial incentive for me to say this. However, I will anecdotally share that I have so far have had at least 5 other parents buy Story Time Chess for their own children after explaining how my kids learned. All 5 went out and bought the game based on my recommendation, and all of them were able to impart the knowledge needed to play the game with the system at hand. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, as my children are now even actively engaged in playing chess online with these friends through long distances as a result! As parents, nothing could please us more.

For more information on the base game’s review, check out the following link!