Fresh Brews: ChessCafe and HydraSip Join the Menu
ChessCafe brings cinematic 3D chess to the On the House section, and HydraSip joins Cold Brew as a one-tap hydration tracker. Two new apps, one of them free.
Two new drinks landed on the menu this week, and one of them is on the house.
ChessCafe is now free in the On the House section, and HydraSip joins Cold Brew as a paid app at $9.99 once (or included in any subscription). Both are native, both run fully offline, and neither asks for an account.
ChessCafe: Chess, but the pieces fight
ChessCafe is a 3D chess game where the pieces do more than slide across a board. Two sculpted armies hold a torch-lit hall, and when you take a piece, your figure walks the distance, strikes, and claims the square while the stone changes colour under its boot. It's chess you can watch.
Three opponent strengths cover the range: Squire plays fast and loose, Knight thinks a few moves ahead, and Warlord searches properly and shows no mercy. The engine runs on its own thread, so the board never stutters while it thinks.
Three armies, each with their own sculpts, weapons and voices, can be mixed per side: the Ivory Kingdom, the Sun Empire, and the Grande Armee. Seven battlegrounds relight the whole world, sky and stone and fires and haze included, each with its own music.
It's a full chess program under the spectacle. Castling, en passant, promotion, optional clocks, take-backs, resign, board flip, a move record you can copy as PGN, and a captured tray with the material score. A flat view lifts the camera overhead and stamps every figure into a clean counter when you need to think. Hotseat mode passes the board across the table with an optional camera swing, and you can set two engines against each other and watch the duel roll into the next one.
Graphics quality is detected on first launch and steps down by itself if the frame rate dips, so it stays smooth on a laptop. ChessCafe is free, and nothing you play leaves your machine. Try it from the Pour Over shelf.
HydraSip: A water tracker that stays out of the way
HydraSip is a hydration tracker for people who won't stick with a complicated one. Log any drink in one tap, watch your progress ring fill, and let the app do the nagging for you.
Four quick buttons log drinks in whatever unit you use, with a glass filling on each button to show the pour. Tell it your weight and how much you move, and it works out how much you should be drinking. Units switch freely: millilitres, US or imperial fluid ounces, or cups, and kilograms, pounds or stone. Nothing you've logged is lost in the switch.
Twelve drink types, each with its own colour: water, sparkling, tea, green tea, herbal, coffee, juice, smoothie, milk, soda, sports drinks, and broth. A contribution-style hydration heatmap spans 30, 90, or 365 days, shaded by volume or coloured by the drink that led each day. Weekly bars give a per-drink breakdown, and the monthly summary shows average daily intake, days you hit the goal, total volume, and your top three drinks.
The menu bar quick log is the killer feature. Log a drink without opening the window and see today's progress next to the icon. Smart reminders fire on an interval or at pinned times like 09:30 with your own message. Forty-seven achievements unlock from your first sip to a thousand litres. Export and import are built in, so a year of habits can move with you.
HydraSip is $9.99 once, or included with any subscription. Grab it from the Cold Brew shelf.
The menu keeps growing
This week brought two very different apps: a free game that turns chess into a spectacle, and a paid utility that quietly keeps you hydrated. The café now serves 65 apps, and the whole menu is $1.60 per device per month on Family Roast. See the full menu and grab a 7-day free trial.
Missed the last round? Fresh Brews: CremaStudio Gets Cheaper and Two Coming Soon covered the CremaStudio price cut and the TinyVideo and ScanStraightener waitlist additions.