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Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

abstractboardgames.com

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Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#1

Post by abstractbg »

Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go.

If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)

Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots
abstractboardgames.com

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#3

Post by zem »

pentominoes would be a nice one to add (players take turns placing pentominoes on the board until someone cannot make a move). probably one of the variants like callisto or blokus where everyone has the same set of tiles in different colours and there are rules around connectedness

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#4

Post by Paracompact »

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up.

Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/or have strategies locked behind progression systems and paywalls, such as TCGs and virtual deck builders. The very few exceptions I found were niche Discord communities around games like Tak, Hex, or Advanced Wars.

When did we as a society lose the appreciation for these things? I get why including a component of dexterity in strategic video games (e.g. RTS) is to take full advantage of the medium, but all this in conjunction means we are very likely never to see another deeply studied cerebral game like go, chess, shogi, mahjong, etc. arise ever again.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#6

Post by abstractbg »

Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

I'm very hopeful that the problem is simply lack of general awareness of these games, and that once there's enough content surrounding them, we'll have a healthy population of people playing more abstract strategy games.

Fun story regarding Hex. It nearly reached what I would call a "mainstream" audience with the movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash starring Russel Crowe. Unfortunately, the Hex scene was cut from the movie! You can watch the cut scene at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTZ3nn2Bge4

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#7

Post by ixwt »

I'm personally a big fan of asymmetrical games. A game I've wanted to play but have never had the board to play it on is Unlur [0]. Arimaa [1] is another one with some history behind it that is uncommon.

It is very much appreciated that I don't have to make an account to play. That is one of the most annoying thing on sites like these to play games.

[0]: https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/unlur

[1]: https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/arimaa

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#8

Post by ixwt »

abstractbg wrote: post #6
Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

I'm very hopeful that the problem is simply lack of general awareness of these games, and that once there's enough content surrounding them, we'll have a healthy population of people playing more abstract strategy games. Fun story regarding Hex. It nearly reached what I would call a "mainstream" audience with the movie "A Beautiful Mind" about John Nash starring Russel Crowe. Unfortunately, the Hex scene was cut from…

I'm not an expert by any means, but there isn't much to draw people to other games aside from curiosity. When it comes to Chess and Go, there is significant money on the line. Chess was also a proxy fight during the Cold War.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#9

Post by mrichey-9988 »

Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

The facebook group "abstract nation" has made having a facebook account worth all the bad stuff associated with facebook. Its lead me to find a ton of great abstracts. It also pointed me to this: https://play.abstractplay.com/
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