The sanctity of the Trophy system was eroded long ago, so it’s no real surprise to see thousands of PS5 players downloading the free game Chess Mate.
The Platinum here, if you’ll excuse the pun, is a piece of cake. Estimates peg it at around five minutes if you already know how to play chess, and only slightly more if you don’t.
All you need to do to unlock the prestigious pot is capture one of every piece, earn a checkmate, and restart at least five times. You can play on the easiest difficulty, and even optimise your success by selecting the shuffle mode.
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There’s a guide walking you through the steps here:
While Sony has been cracking down on PS Store shovelware of late, we’re not sure Chess Mate will fall foul to its stricter policies.
This is a legitimate free-to-play chess game, and while there are some in-game purchases, you don’t need to buy any of them to play this.
Free Platinums Are Growing in Popularity
While Chess Mate may escape the platform holder’s wrath, it does look like free Platinums are becoming the new meta for opportunistic devs.
Ecchi Secrets also released recently, a version of Qix with lewd images. This one is a bit more transparent with its AI generated anime art and pricey microtransactions, although you can once again earn all of the Trophies for free.
What’s fascinating is that spicy Qix games have actually been a thing on consoles for decades; some of you may recall the Gals Panic series on SEGA Saturn, for example, which is effectively the same concept – albeit with proper anime pixel art, as opposed to the AI generated guff here.
And then there was Namco’s Dancing Eyes in 1996, which took the concept into a 3D arena, as you surgically removed the clothes of animated polygonal models.
Plans to reboot that series for the PS Move were scrapped in 2012, but seeing as Ecchi Secrets is a going concern on the PS Store these days, the publisher may have been a decade too early with its plans to reboot the property.