who invented slither?

with my limited play so far, seems like a great game. does anyone know who invented this game? I had tried coming up with a connection game based on go but could not do so. This game is a home run! (sorry to post in general forum but still no forum for slither!)

It was Corey Clark, according to Board Game Geek and igGameCenter: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/38921/corey-clark

let's try again: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/38921/corey-clark

Richard, can we have a forum dedicated to Slither, please?

You could make a Hex version of Slither, perhaps called Hether, where moving one stone to a neighboring empty cell was allowed before placing a new stone. I don't offhand see any equivalent for Slither's diagonal/orthogonal restriction.

The only reason for not allowing diagonal moves is to prevent draws i believe. Apart from that, the rule seems pretty arbitrary to me. But I agree it is a well designed game.

The extra moving condition is a great idea. Slither without this condition would be a drawish game like without the diagonal/orthogonal restriction. The designer make a great job combining them.

As MarleysGhost said it could be interesting to play hex with the moving condition. As many other static games (games where you don't move pieces on the board)

1) (Go) It is possible that there already exist such variant.

2) (Twixt) The adjacent hole might be considered a hole at knight distance or at most at knight distance

3) (Reversi) The starting position would have to be changed to a bigger cross or 4x4 checkerboard pattern.

4) (n in a row games)

5) (D&B)

The swap rule for those moving variants is to weak especially in games where in static variant first player have big advantage. In Slither it is always beneficial for second player to swap since it takes only couple of moves to bring the first stone from the corner close to the center of the board. Solutions might be

a) The first stone cant be moved entire game

b) The second player can place two stones on the board in his last move

c) The first player places more than one stone and than second player can swap. For example first player play 4 white stones in the corners and 3 black close to the center. I think second player should not swap in this position.

I like the idea of moving condition just as much as i like the 2 move rule (play 2 moves) since it can also lead to a great game (C6 from gomoku for example). As for 2 move rule you can iterate it to a 2n move rule. The moving condition can also be iterated to a n-moving condition up to a all-moving condition (Before placing new stone you can move all your stones in restricted way). Maraca pointed out that in case of 2n move rule the resulting game might be not very interesting because you cant see to deep into gametree. The same holds for n-moving condition. But i think that it is worth to explore the 1-moving condition for every static game. It can lead to an interesting game like slither although it have no playable predecessor.

The whole point of the diagonal-only connection restriction and the two part move in Slither (optional slide & new placement) is to make a connection game on a square grid possible. And it works incredibly well! Hex does not suffer from any deadlock issues, so attempting to convert Slither's game mechanic to Hex wouldn't really add anything to the game, I don't think.

Regarding the swap rule, I think kfiecio is correct in his assessment, but only on the 9x9 board. The board is just too small for there to be any bad placement you would not want to swap. However, I think as you move to bigger boards, some sweet spots or optimal initial placement tipping points could be found. On 13x13, the only other size currently available on LG, I think there are some placements you could decide not to swap but it would have to be not very far from the corner/side (even with the idea of trying to bring it closer to the action on subsequent turns). The key here is playing style. It's not a given that Black will be better off after a swap on the 13x13 board. If Black's initial placement is sufficiently buried in the corner then white can safely play somewhere else, but then must play more aggressively than Black in order to make more difficult Black's attempts to casually re-position the "out of place" initial stone.

If another board size becomes more fashionable or more widely agreed upon to give the better game strategically (19x19 perhaps?), then the initial placement and playing style both become less influential.

Just my two cents ...

I must say this Slither has taken some getting used to. At first my brain was not considering diagonals when thinking about where a stone could be moved to. Then I noticed I was always making the move and the placement in the same neighborhood, while my opponents often split them up. I don't know what other Slither foibles I still have, but I'm sure there are some.

"Move and then placement in the same neighborhood" I think is equivalent to the tactical completion of a bridge in Hex and other connection game terminology; Whereas "splitting them up" seems to be where the long-range strategical neurons start firing. I hope you stick with it teammate! :-)

I agree that I would swap approximately all spots on a 9x9; however on a 13x13 I feel like I could play against an opening stone buried in a corner (or nearly so) by shifting the action to the other side of the board; even if the opponent tries to bring the stone back it'll mean I'll have quite a large number of "double moves" in the area, achieving a better position before the extra stone comes in.

Other things I find very interesting in the game are the race to bring an extra stone in a "ladder" (using Hex vacabulary), as well as tactically using the diagonal ban to make it awkward for the opponent to block me (even though the "banning" stone is sometimes useless).

Right now I've only seen one double threat ("splitting"), but I guess more will come as we advance in the understanding in the game.

Hello everyone. I am the designer of Slither. Thank you for the kind words. Since it's being discussed I'll mention that I did come up with a Hex version of Slither although I didn't publish the rules in any capacity because all in all it seemed like a rather pointless addition. Anyway in the Hex version of Slither instead of tenuous diagonal connections being banned it is forbidden to place stones on cells connected by a vertex unless they are adjacent to a single common stone. You may also slide a stone along a vertex or to an immediately adjacent cell. The game is pretty much the same except adapted to Hex topology. I'm not sure how it plays though, except for the odd time when I was messing around in iggamecenter's sandbox. I suspect it may have some essentiality in that this necessarily eliminates the quintessential ladders of Hex theory, perhaps leading to more subtle strategic implications. From what I recall even though the stones seem to have an immense amount of mobility, moving a stone to a position where the placement will be able to satisfy the move restriction can be quite tricky. I'm not sure if I'm endorsing this variant or not, just kind of putting it out there.

As for the swap rule not being effective. I honestly have to concede that it is probably not effective on the 9x9 board, although that is a decent introductory size. However even though the stones move, moving a stone out of the corner on say the 13x13 board is somewhat of a waste of resources. Hex with the pie rule necessarily confers an advantage to the second player, since the game is hot and there are no placements on the board that could harm your position. Pie doesn't obscure the advantage only coldness (or a disincentive to move) will do that but it does definitely bring balance to the game. Slither is not a cold game, you'll never want to forgo your move as you might in Dots and Boxes or say Steere's Hex Oust but it does have this sense of coldness where the move restriction is concerned; it is possible to generate positions that are inherently disadvantageous apart from the actions of your opponent, the most obvious of which is 3 or 4 singletons at the corners of a 3x3 area. Another feature of Slither is that the board must be fuller at the end than Hex because the concept of ladders is not apparent in this game if even existent. What this seems to indicate to me is that Slither on a certain board size is a necessarily longer game than Hex on a board of the same dimensions. Taking all this into account I think Slither already has a substantial level of depth which gives it balance and the swap rule only makes it deeper adding a level of parity that I think is at least on Par with Hex with pie. Anyway I am not worried about anyone wringing out 13x13 Slither anytime soon.

one slight clarification. I meant "bridges" not ladders. Ladders definitely exist in Slither, especially in edge play