This page describes the Android build distributed through Google Play, which is the only build of this app today.
What the app is
Xiangqi is an offline Chinese chess app for Android. You play it two ways: against the computer at one of three strengths (casual, amateur, master), taking either colour, or with two players taking turns on one device, in which case no engine is loaded at all. The full rule set runs on your own device, including the ones that are easy to fake - the blocked horse-leg, the blocked elephant eye, the cannon's mount, the flying generals facing each other, perpetual check losing, threefold repetition and sixty moves without a capture.
The app is free, needs no account, and this version has no in-app purchases, no subscription and no virtual currency. Games, reviews and exports work with no connection.
Playing, analysing and the one ad
A game is scored by the app's own rule core and search. The three strengths differ in how long the engine is allowed to think and how wide it looks, so the same setting can play a little differently on a fast phone and on a slow one - the opponent is the engine running on your hardware, not a fixed script.
When a game ends you get a review. The free part is always there and is never taken away: the move list with a grade against each move, both sides' accuracy and the win-rate curve across the game. The deep part - the written advice for individual moves and the better move the engine would have played - sits behind a single rewarded video. Watch it through and that game is unlocked for good on this device; you will not be asked again for the same game. Close it early and nothing unlocks. If no video is available right now, or the phone has no connection, the entry says so, nothing is charged to you, and you can try again later.
Two things follow from that and we would rather you read them here than find them out later. First, the deep review is the only place in the app with an ad in front of it: every strength, every colour, the whole archive, replay, .xq export and import, share codes, report export and all settings are in the download. Second, unlocking is settled on your device by the ad SDK's reward callback - there is no server that could hand it to you or take it back.
What the engine's judgement is, and what it is not
The engine, the evaluation and the per-move explanations were written for this project. The explanations are assembled from rule and template tables that ship inside the app; nothing here calls a language model or a cloud service.
So read the review for what it is. A grade and a "better move" are this engine's evaluation of that position within its time budget - study material for thinking about the game, not an authority on theory and not a claim that a master would play the same way. In unusual positions the templates can be blunt or repeat themselves, and an evaluation can be wrong, especially about long-term sacrifices and endgame technique that a short search cannot see. Nothing in the app is coaching, and no result, grade or export is a certificate of anything.
Your games and your files
Saved games live in the app's own storage on your device, and the archive keeps the fifty most recent. There is no server copy: we cannot look up, restore, merge, transfer or delete a game for you, and no support request will change that. Whether a save survives a reinstall, a factory reset or a move to a new phone is decided by Android's own backup, which is Google's machinery rather than ours - see "Backups and moving to a new phone" in the Privacy Policy.
Anything you export is yours and leaves the app only because you chose where it goes. That covers the .xq file, the plain-text share code and the review report, all of them written on your device. A report exported before you watched the video carries the move list and the grades and states that the per-move advice is not included - the gated lines cannot be smuggled into an export. Once you hand a file or a code to the system share sheet, to a chat app or to a friend, what happens to it is on your side, and a share code you paste in is opened for replay exactly as its author left it.
Acceptable use
Use the app within the law. Do not decompile, disassemble or extract the app's engine, interface, artwork, sounds or explanation tables in order to redistribute them as a stand-alone package; do not resell, repackage or rebadge the app, whether or not you change it; and do not edit stored game data to produce a report or a share code presented as a real result. Nothing in this clause limits what the third-party libraries named in the Privacy Policy allow under their own licences, and nothing here touches rights you cannot be asked to give up under your local law.
The engine in this app is written from scratch by the operator. No third-party Chinese chess engine's source or binary is included, linked or derived from, and no rights of any such project are claimed over it.
Licence
Subject to these terms and to Google Play's Terms of Service, you get a personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use the app on Android devices you legally control. No title in the software or in its assets transfers to you. The rule core, the engine, the interface, the board artwork, the synthesised sounds and the explanation tables remain the operator's; the components listed in the Privacy Policy keep their own licences.
Disclaimers and liability
The app is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind, to the extent the law allows. It depends on your device, its Android version, its processor and memory, and on the manufacturer's power-management policy: a system update, storage pressure, an aggressive battery saver or unusual hardware can change how the engine performs or whether a sound plays. Availability of the rewarded video depends on Google's ad network filling the request, and periods when it does not are a limit of the network, not a defect we are failing to repair.
We do not warrant that the app will run without error on every device or every Android version. None of this affects your mandatory statutory rights as a consumer, and nothing here excludes liability that applicable law does not allow to be excluded.
Changes and ending use
Features may change between versions, and a change that materially affects how you play - including whether the deep review still costs a video - will be described in the release notes. An update to these terms does not by itself turn a free feature into a paid one. You may stop using the app at any time and delete it along with the saved games on your device; deleting the app does not recall a .xq file, a report or a share code you already sent somewhere else.
If something is wrong, write to the developer first - the address is on the Privacy Policy page linked from the Google Play listing. Nothing in these terms asks you to give up consumer protections or the jurisdiction of a court that would otherwise hear your claim.
Which terms apply where
These terms describe how the app may be used. They do not replace Google Play's Terms of Service or your device manufacturer's own policies, and they do not override the Privacy Policy - how data is handled is settled there.
Contact
Operator: Beijing Blue Ocean Xinfan Technology Co., Ltd
Privacy and support email: howoo.bluesail@gmail.com
Please mention "Xiangqi" and what you would like done. You can also reach us through the support link on the app's Google Play product page. We do not ask for unrelated personal details to answer an ordinary question - and since the game holds no server-side record of you, there is usually nothing on our side to act on. What the advertising and statistics components collect is Google's to handle under its own policy.