Reposted from blog: http://nickbentley.posterous.com/new-game-kink

N-in-a-row games present a stiff design challenge because they've been done to death. They're especially challenging for me because I don't like them. Though I respect them for their simplicity and intuitiveness (they really do possess an exemplary degree of both), they're way too tactical. They feel robotic and shallow. I want strategic scope. Though I've worked out half a dozen designs on paper, all aimed at increasing strategic scope, I've not tested/developed any till now.

Recently I got a breather from my nasty workload, and tried out what I thought might be my best idea on a whim. It worked! Well! So now I'm going to talk about it.

So my goal was to create a more strategic N-in-a-row game, but it must also:

1. preserve the primary qualities of simplicity and intuitiveness.
2. preserve the spirit of N-in-a-row games, whatever that means. It's gotta possess a certain N-in-a-row-iness
3. be novel.

It's hard to satisfy #1 and #3 together because most of the really simple N-in-a-row variations are already covered.

It's also hard to make the game more strategic while satisfying #2, because a shift in the balance between tactics and strategy can transform a game's spirit.

That said, the new game is called Kink. The idea is simple: it's a basic N-in-a-row game where the row is allowed to have a single bend in it. Put another way, the row can change direction once, anywhere along it's length. The angle of the bend formed can be acute, right, or obtuse.

The introduction of a Kink has two effects which I believe will make the game richer and more strategic (consistent with my experience of the first few plays):

1. The number of degrees of freedom in the winning pattern is much higher for Kink than for the equivalent standard N-in-a-row game.
2. The number of stones in a row required for winning must be larger.

To write the rule set, I modified the rules to Connect 6, which is to my mind the most canonical (and one of the best) N-in-a-row games. Here you go:

Kink is a game for 2 players, played with a Go set.

1. The board begins empty. One player owns the black stones and the other owns the white.
2. To begin, Black places a single stone on any empty space.
3. From then on, starting with White, each player places 2 stones per turn.
4. The first player to form a row of 9-in-a-row wins. The row may have up to one Kink in it, which may form an acute, right, or obtuse angle. Rows may run both orthogonally and diagonally.

Note: I don't yet know if 9 is the right number. If it's not 9, it's probably 8. Play with it and report back here with insight.

Clara is very simple connection game. Maybe it is absolut simplest abstract game. Players put stone on square board. Black's goal is connect top and left sides and white's goal is connect left and right sides. Longer connection can not cross shorter connection.

Variants. More longer and complicated game depends on diameter of stone.

There are possible more and more variants. For example with limit of stones or there can be more sizes of stones in one game

Mu was conceived more than a quarter of a century ago.
It has been playtested once, immediately after, on a non-segmented board against Anneke Treep, who was to become the mother of my son Falco, a decade later.
She won. With Muldoon I say: "Clever girl!"
Its introduction at the games club Fanaat couldn't have been timed worse. Everybody had just started climbing Martin Medema's monumental "Atlantis", and shortly after there came a tsunami of dungeons & trolls that wiped all abstracts from the scene.
Hi ho.

The game remained on the shelf and all physical evidence of it was wiped out in the explosion of SE Fireworks in May 2000.

I didn't worry about that. The reason I could conceive Mu without so much as a checker, is the same that made me unable to forget it: it's a self explanatory organism with will, intent and logic, rather than a bag of assorted rules and restrictions. It would always explain itself. The only mental note I took is when Phalanx became a segmented game too, specifically to allow a 'non-compact' lay out. That kind of layout, I thought, would improve Mu too, especially since the implication would be a 'fragmented' Wall consisting of different parts.




christian freeling
game whisperer


Mu © mindsports.nl

http://breakthroughboard.blogspot.com/

I started a blog for anyone interested. I hope to develop some basic ideas on what is good and bad in breakthrough play, and explore what the hell is going on during the opening in an 8x8 game. I'm writing an AI so I need to define everything in precise terms as I develop the evaluation. Input is highly appreciated.

People interested in breakthrough may be interested by this link:
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~jpineau/comp424/

I couldn't find the source code to any of the project entries, but it is interesting the top AI still lost 15 out of 130ish games.

After several months and years of investigation and testing I finally invent a new board word game.

Rules

Game is played on triangular board with hexagonal spaces. Board has 16 spaces to a side. For quicker game is possible play on smaller triangle - 13,10 or 7 spaces to a side.


WYPS stones.

There are 136 stones with letters. Stones have two distinct sides, each side representing one player.

Game play.

1. All stones are put into bag. Random four (for first black move only three !) stones are put on RACK and four letters are put on POOL.
2. Player on move create one word from letters on board and from letters from rack. Player must use at
least one letter from rack. New letters have color of player. If player used in his word some
opponent's stones, she turn one of these stones to player's color. If player is not able create any
word, he put only one stone from rack on board.
3. After move, player fill rack to four letters from pool and fill pool to four letters from bag.
4. The first player to connect all three sides of the board wins.


Variants

For WYPS exist several variants. On LG is implemented:






Final position


Comparison with other word games:


* No draw
* Can be played on different sizes of board
* No point counting
* Simple rules

Availability

This game will be published by RANKA company. More info will be on pages: www.wyps.info. There is published one basic problem.




©COPYRIGHT RANKA 2009

Ed van Zon implemented HanniBall for Zillions.

HanniBall --- A late arrival


HanniBall @ Zillions - screenshot


HanniBall © mindsports.nl

QUENTIN

I invent very simple word game. It can be played with any number of players. First player start game with any 2-letters word. These 2 letters are stack of letters. Next player must add some letter to this stack of letters and create new (and unused) word from these letters. And so on. If is not possible create a new word, player must cross out first letter (or more) from stack.
Player can cross max 8 letters (or less for shorten game). Player who cross 9th letter is out. Last player in game is winner.

Example of game (three players, 3 point game):

1. IT [it] - Adam's move

2. BIT [itb] - Bob's move

3. BITS [itbs] - Cyril's move. On stack are now letters: I, T, B, S

4. BEST [tbse]- Adam was not able create new word from all letters. He crossed out letter 'I' and add letter 'E'.

5. USE [seu] - Bob crossed 2 letters and add letter 'U'.

6. USES [seus]

7. ISSUE [seusi]

8. ISSUES [seusis]

9. ISSUED [eusisd]

10. SIDE [isde] Adam is now out of game. Bob has still 1 point and Cyril 2.

11. IN [in] Because Adam is out, next player - Bob - start with new 2 letters word.

12. WIN [inw]

13. NOW [now] It was Bob's last strikeout.

14. KNOW [nowk]

15. KNOWN [nowkn]

16. KNOWS [owkns]

17. SON Bob is out. Cyril is winner.

On www.littlegolem.net/quentin/ is flash version of this game.

There's an unexpected epilogue to the essay below and this time it is documented as well as possible, including the context: in the first half of April 2009 I've been working on dutch translations of the rules of games at iGoogle Game Center. This unexpectedly triggered the 'autoshaping' of a game and it shows the way the majority of my games were conceived. I'm sticking my neck out with this one, not as a provocation but as an illustration: this is how it happens.

A late arrival
HanniBall

HanniBall

HanniBall © mindsports.nl

This is not a tutorial on how to invent abstract games. I wouldn't encourage anyone. Nor is it a comparative investigation, because inventors cannot escape the suspicion of bias. At most it may serve as a basis for either or both, for whoever decides to embark on this course.

Between 1979 and 1986 I invented some fourty abstract games, most of which can be found in the Arena and the almost complete games section at MindSports.
Dameo is an exception in that it was invented, quite unintentionally, in the early spring of 2000.

Looking back now, from a safe distance, and with the benefit of hindsight, I'd like to clarify how and why I invented these games, and more specifically why not.

read on ...


photo: students union - university of the arts - london

Hello all, it's almost year's end and I wish everyone here a very happy 2009. I want to thank Richard in particular for a great site, and for implementing Havannah. Now my friend Ed van Zon and I have another suggestion: Emergo.
Just to tentatively probe the idea, I've published the about down here:

---

We I did not invent Emergo, we discovered it.

Quintessential
Quintessential games lead a basic principle of placement and capture to its logical conclusion - one can only follow and see where it leads, whether illustrious like Go or modest like Checkers. Emergo is the quintessential implementation of a mechanism of movement and capture called 'column checkers'. Its name is derived from the Latin 'Luctor et Emergo', the motto of the Dutch province of Zeeland, and meaning 'I wrestle and emerge'.
Its origin is a really bad game called Bashne, invented some two centuries ago in Russia. The great Emanuel Lasker improved on it with his game Lasca. But Lasker made a classic mistake: he left a great idea where he found it. It has affected the game's reputation in a negative way.
To the lobbyists Lasca was 'obviously superior to Checkers' - they ignored its contamination. To the skeptics it was too erratic to be taken seriously - they ignored it altogether. As a result the potential of the concept has been grossly neglected.
Column checkers - for dire want of a better name - suffers from a 'weird checkers' image. As it turns out, Emergo is so wide that Chess, Draughts and Go simultaneously drown in it in terms of the number of possible positions. Yet it has less material than any of them. Its inner logic is as flawless as one would expect. Its strategy is basically simple but its tactics are fabulous, both in variety and depth.
However, the small player base for 3-dimensional games doesn't work in its favor.

The game is a joint effort with Ed van Zon, who got me interested in Lasca's way of capture in the first place.
A hexagonal variant, eventually turned out to be intrinsically flawed, ironically due to the very properties that make the square version such a great game. It is featured in R. Wayne Schmittberger's 'New Rules for Classic Games' (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York - ISBN 0-471-53621-0) and in Games Magazine (February 1986).

---

Of course Emergo can be played at MindSports, as indeed Havannah and many other games - we noticed however how much more 'player friendly' Little Golem has been styled. This, as much as the game's initial 'treshold', may have caused the relatively small player base. Havannah for instance is played rather massively here too, compared to MindSports :)

Cheers,
christian freeling