Top 10 Ugliest Lichess Sets

10. Wood (3D)

I want to preface this by saying that my aesthetic principles are mainly built around chaos, mismatching, and maximalism. But even I don't understand why this set exists. Why does White look like it's made of ivory, but Black is clearly made of wood? This set looks like the kind of set you'd find in a house where the kids are so messy that you can never find all the pieces you need for a board game, so you just have to use pieces from other board games (specific, I know). Anarcandy is so much more stylistically uniform than Wood.

9. Merida

Merida isn't the worst set ever made, it's just... redundant. It's CBurnett but with thicker outlines and slightly bigger pieces. It has no reason to exist. There's no aesthetic advantages to this that CBurnett doesn't have. As you can see, this is the shortest paragraph because there's nothing more to say about it.

8. Gioco

Is Gioco supposed to be a cartoony set or a minimalist set? I can't tell. The oversimplification of the queen and the rook doesn't quite sit well with me. The curviness of the pieces is really off-putting when compared to the strangely angular knight. And the knight doesn't even have a face. How is that horse supposed to see where it's going? Faces on knights can really improve any set. Somehow. Shout out to Anarcandy's "deal with it" knights. Notice how I'm not talking about Gioco anymore? Good, I don't want to.

7. Riohacha

I've already said before that I don't really like minimalist sets, and Riohacha definitely falls in that category. Everything is just so straight and it just doesn't look right to me. Diamonds are a cool shape, but I hate that diamond-headed bishop with a burning passion. If these were real chess pieces, the manufacturer would probably be knees-deep in lawsuits from people accidentally stabbing themselves with that thing. And why is the cross on the king floating for some reason?

6. ModernWood

There's something about the colors of ModernWood that's just so... bleugh. Who wants to play chess with Slightly Tan and Reddish Brown instead of Black and White? The pieces also look way too glossy and polished for a wooden set. Perhaps ModernWood's biggest sin is that it's essentially a reskin of ModernJade, which is a beautiful set.

5. Pixel

As a gamer, I understand the intent and appreciate the effort. There's just something so off about this set to me. The chessmen don't look like they belong in a retro game, they look like Perler Bead art (not dissing Perler Beads, those are sick). The individual squares that make up each piece look weird and messed up on the display. I totally think a pixel art chess set would work, but this isn't the way to do it.

4. Spatial

I have absolutely nothing against abstract art. It's a cool style with plenty of iconic artists. There's even some really awesome real-life abstract chess sets out there (look up Man Ray and Tizo Lucite for some beautiful examples). Spatial does not deserve the honor of being mentioned along with those works of art. I think the biggest glaring problem from the get-go is the rook. What the heck is that supposed to represent? The bishop looks like a sentient Christmas tree with a slash taken out of it, the pawns are just dots, and the knight is... just a standard knight. It's practically copy-pasted from CBurnett's knight, but the Spatial designers just said "quick, make it curvier and change the position of the ears before we get sued".

3. Shapes

I know why Shapes exist, and I understand its purpose. Each shape represents how the piece is supposed to move. That's wonderful for beginning chess players, but Lichess already tells you how the pieces are supposed to move and ONLY lets you make legal moves. I also really don't like the square pawns. They could have just made them an arrow. To remind you that the pawn goes forward. Shapes really is "Video Game Tutorials: The Chess Set".

2. Letters

You know those "oversimplified logo" memes that were popular a while back? This is the logical conclusion of that. These aren't chessmen anymore. These are just chess... things. You can't get the same feeling of getting a brilliant checkmate with your Q instead of your Queen. I know the letters represent the name of each piece, but they didn't even make it spell something funny, so it can be ironically bad like Horsey. And again, we have the pawn dots. Or dot pawns. Maybe it can just be one word. Dotpawn. Pawndot. Whatever it is, I hate it.

1. Symmetric

There is no way you unironically like this set. If you're using this set right now, you picked a set at random or your chess friends dared you to do it. The idea of a symmetrical chess set is really cool, but boy did these guys screw up. Kings and queens look like eldritch aberrations that your Dungeon Master threatens you with when your party acts up. The rooks look like some kind of vaguely castle-shaped insect. The knight badly needs a chiropractor, and the pawns and bishops are double-sided fidget spinners. The beauty of Experimental cannot save this from the ugliness of this set. This set should be deleted and banned from Lichess. To quote Cloud Strife from the cult classic film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, "Stay in my memories where you belong." Actually, scratch that. Every Lichess user must have their mind wiped so they forget this set's existence. Lichess is free, but I would totally pay money to have my memory of Symmetric removed.

What do you think is the ugliest Lichess set? Or is there one mentioned here that you would defend to the death?