r/abstractgames

Christian Freeling, a master craftsman of abstract strategy from Netherlands, passed away, leaving the game design community without a true visionary. Freeling left behind an exquisite legacy with works such as Havannah, Dameo, and Grand Chess, which went much beyond simply making games. Freeling radically changed the way we think about tactics. He had a unique, bright mathematical mind that saw potential for perfect balance and infinite depth in centuries-old rules, constantly striving to get rid of weaknesses like sluggish draws or first-mover advantage. His Mindsports platform provided a haven for pure, unadulterated intellectual competition for decades, and future generations of designers and players will be motivated by his philosophical commitment to mechanics and clarity.

RIP, Christian Freelings... May God bless him in heaven!

Lately I have been thinking about how to convert each finite group into a game ( puzzle, piece of art or music). Here I present a two player game on a Cayley table:

Put your animals orthogonally (diagonally not allowed) connected on the table or once they are on the Cayley table move them to get orthogonally connected. If you put h on h = f*g , then in the next move you block your oponnents pieces f and g. Situations which repeat three times result in remis. Players which have no mor legal moves lose.

Here is the game. I guess it could be used as some sort of way to educate yourself and become familiar with Cayley tables, but what I fiind more interesting about to think is:

How do group theoretic properties reflect if one of the players have a winning strategy or not?

Does the game for group G allow advantage for the first / second player?

Here is the link to the game: Tierisch verbundene Welt

It is build like this: On the worldmap you see your groups (animals), you play against MiniMax algorithm level 2. Each solved world, opens you at least one next world (group, animals). It starts very easy with the trivial group. Who sets the first stone, wins. Then the second, with a moment of reflection it is also doable. The group C3 is a bit trickier and C4 or the Klein four group are difficult but doable. I have yet to solve C5.

One can prove that the ration of (number of solutions by white or black) / (number of legal figures in the game) goes exponetially to 0 as the group size goes to infinity, so expect each increase in group size to be more difficult to master.

https://reddit.com/link/1ta1x99/video/uoezijdr1i0h1/player

Hello guys, I wanted to share my project and how far I have come.
The Game is a mixture between Checkers, Chess and Tak. It is not yet finished, but I thought I would show you the basic placement and movement mechanic that I have finished.

There are two players. During their Turn they can perform three actions:

1. Placing a Stone on an unoccupied Tile. I know in the video Stones are placed on occupied Tiles too. This is only for easier testing and debugging tho. the final program won't allow you to do that.
2. They can perform a Checkers-style capture. this is not yet in the program.
3. They can Collapse a Tower similar to Tak. This is also not yet in the program.
   The goal of the Game is to capture your opponents Kingstone (also not yet in the program). If there is no move available for either Player, the player with the most Stones on the field wins.

So what actually happens in the video? We start with both silver and gold already having placed some stones and its currently golds turn. they place a stone at C5 (since that's the only option that's currently implemented, they can only choose this action and not 2) or 3)). But placing a Stone next to an other Stone of the same color allows waves to happen. It is the players choice to trigger them, but once started, waves cant be stopped. Gold chooses to accept those waves and the golden Tower on C6 jumps over the placed stone at C5 and lands on C4. Now it's Silvers turn.
Silver places a stone at B3. He could trigger Waves, but he refuses.
Gold on his turn places a stone on top of the stone at C5. this will be illegal later on, but I wanted to show the icon change that symbolizes a stone vs a tower.
Silver places a stone at C3. this time he triggers the waves. C2 and B3 jump over C3 and land on B4 and C4. A stone lands always on top, so silver puts its stone on the golden tower. A tower is always treated like a stone of the same color as the towers top stone. But this isnt it. after all it is called waves and not wave. Stones that jumped bring a Wave will trigger Stones next to them to jump also (next to always means orthogonally in this game). Stones that have already jumped or were placed this turn dont get triggered a second time. So the stone landing on C4 triggers the Stone at B2 to jump to D4, and the Stone at D4 to jump to B2, but not the Stone that was placed at C3. The stone landing at D3 will trigger the stone at D2 to jump to D4 and the Stone that is at D4 to jump to D2. You might have noticed that D4 gets triggered twice at the same time. in such a scenario the player may choose with trigger applies to the stone. Silver chooses that D4 should jump to D2. But there is a second problem. Both D2 and B4 land on D4. so wich stone (or tower) should go onto the other? again the player chooses. the player chooses that D2 goes under B4. But we aren't finished. Remember D4? he landed next to a stone at E2. so E2 jumps to C2. Since there are no stones left to trigger, the turn ends and it would be golds turn.

Rn i am working on rewriting the code and then implementing the other rules. after that I want to implement it into Alpha Zero General, so that I can have a competent Ai to play against. Ofc visuals will need to be updated. What do you think? Ans also, do you have ideas for a name?

The aim of the game is to construct a closed loop with as many tiles as you can.

For each small finite group G with n elements, I create n*n = n² tiles of n different types. The difficulty increases with n and the also more "complicated" groups tend to be more difficult to "solve". Default ist the Klein Four group V4, but you can change it easily in your browser below the board of the game. Any feedback, especially any ideas on how to make this to a fun multiplayer game? (Spoiler: For the group C5 we have maximal number of tiles: 25 = 5 * 5:)

https://preview.redd.it/9jowo20lgyzg1.png?width=1093&format=png&auto=webp&s=abfa85b6dd24e0637ff86203ecf54f7c82b248b9