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

abstractboardgames.com

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

#31

Post by vintermann »

Buttons840 wrote: post #27
Paracompact wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Spirit Island! Probably played more hours of that game than any other in my collection. Granted, it's purely a cooperative game, and much more artificially complex ("fiddly") than any abstract. It's the immortal simplicity and competition of games like chess and go that I was looking to rekindle, but I guess they aren't well suited to modern gaming tastes. Dominion is also great, and in its simplicity literall…

I haven't played YINSH, but I haven played some of the other games in that "series". You're aware of the others, right? Which is your favorite (YINSH I assume)?

Not the OP, but I liked ZERTZ. It's very symmetric, almost, but not quite, an "impartial game" in mathematical terms (where you don't have to know whose move it is to know if they have a winning position). You can set up the most outrageous combinations, going from nothing to having won with a series of forced moves.

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

#32

Post by BrenBarn »

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 think "have players online at any given time" is the tough part there, but it's also the tough part for many non-abstract games. If you look around on Board Game Arena you can see a number of abstract games available, but with many you'll struggle to find any other players.

There are some cool abstract games out there, but they're not super popular. Abalone was mentioned in another comment here. Octi is another cool one. Some like Azul or Patchwork have a light theme but it doesn't really affect the rules, mostly just an excuse for the piece design, which I think puts them in a similar category to chess.

I'm not sure I'd say we won't get another deeply studied game. I mean, if we're comparing to chess and go, it will take hundreds of years to really know if any modern game has that staying power, let alone remains interesting to analyze. But I do wonder if we'll ever get a game that's both deep and popular.

The popularity of RPGs, TCGs, and expansion-based games suggests to me that a lot of people really like feeling a sense of immersion into a "world" that's constantly revealing new "content", rather than discovering new variety within an existing system. Maybe this is just a stereotype, but I also feel like there's a synergy this and a similar vibe prominent in stuff like fanfic, where people like to engage in this sort of generative building on some core ideas. The "pure" or "cerebral" gamer who is really interested in the ramifications of a fixed ruleset is somewhat more rare. Also there are so many games out there now that even cerebral gamers may be tempted to explore new ones rather than digging deep into familiar ones.

This is just to say that maybe some existing abstract games are actually deep, but in order to know that, we'd need people to take the time to analyze them and explore them. Maybe time will tell.

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

#33

Post by dole »

Paracompact wrote: post #17
Buttons840 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about something like competitive Dominion? There are expansions, but the game is symmetrical. All players have the same abilities in an actual game. Or Spirit Island at high difficulty?

I love Spirit Island! Probably played more hours of that game than any other in my collection. Granted, it's purely a cooperative game, and much more artificially complex ("fiddly") than any abstract. It's the immortal simplicity and competition of games like chess and go that I was looking to rekindle, but I guess they aren't well suited to modern gaming tastes. Dominion is also great, and in its simplicity literall…

Dominion is licensed in various online incarnations anyway.

With limits on expansions and other rules, it is possible to get Dominion competitive enough to study games and optimize for turns, the original isotropic had a decent ranking and rating system (RIP and add’l shoutout for their implementation of the Innovation card game):

https://dominion.isotropic.org/leaderboard/

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

#34

Post by abstractbg »

bix6 wrote: post #30

I don’t quite understand this tumbleweed game but it seems fun so I’ll look up a video.

Here's the rules video used by the Tumbleweed community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjA_g3nwYW4

Also, in case you are curious, Tumbleweed has a discord https://discord.com/invite/wu6Xdtt497

They are currently playing through the 2025 Tumbleweed World Championship. Lots of strong players there!

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

#35

Post by mylesp »

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/…

A fun and fairly popular one is Hive. It is a physical game akin to chess but has an active community online on https://hivegame.com/

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

#37

Post by zem »

Paracompact wrote: post #17
Buttons840 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about something like competitive Dominion? There are expansions, but the game is symmetrical. All players have the same abilities in an actual game. Or Spirit Island at high difficulty?

I love Spirit Island! Probably played more hours of that game than any other in my collection. Granted, it's purely a cooperative game, and much more artificially complex ("fiddly") than any abstract. It's the immortal simplicity and competition of games like chess and go that I was looking to rekindle, but I guess they aren't well suited to modern gaming tastes. Dominion is also great, and in its simplicity literall…

I also think the gipf games haven't had enough time and volume of players to see if they are actually as long-term engaging as chess and go. my speculation is that the classic abstracts are the ones that turned out to have an almost accidental emergent depth that kept people playing them even as better and better strategies were devised, because they were never "solved". it is unclear if yinsh will turn out to have an endless stream of better and better strategies emerge, or if it will be fun while people figure it out but plateau when they do.

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

#38

Post by zem »

quuxplusone wrote: post #19
abstractbg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Will try to figure out a version that I can get permission to add to the website.

You're welcome to "Capture Pentominoes" if you want it! https://club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/pento/pento.html

the usenet thread was a fun nostalgic read - something about the character of discussions was different from the ones you get on web based fora like reddit today. (also i recognise your name from rec.puzzles, which was another nice nostalgia moment :))

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

#39

Post by nenadalm »

nice website, Thanks for sharing. I like board games, so I'll definitely try some (or all) of them.

> I'm always looking for new games or new features to add

Nice feature to add would be single device multiplayer for the games.

I play board games mostly in person. I know that there are travel versions of many games... but I don't like to carry too much stuff. So I've created 2 games that I sometimes play with other people (e.g. on a train, bus, or anywhere else if there's nothing better to do).

Both games have only 2 player mode on single device. They're PWAs with offline support, so you can install them on your phone and don't need internet to play.

These are:

- backgammon: https://nenadalm.github.io/backgammon/ (link to the rules at the bottom in menu)

- virus wars: https://nenadalm.github.io/virus-wars/ (link to the rules at the bottom)

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

#40

Post by workingonit3 »

mylesp wrote: post #36

Hive is my favourite for anyone looking for another abstract strategy boardgame. It has been very fun and feels very deep.

Hive is a really nice game.

This year we picked up Homeworlds, there are more rules, but scratches a deeper itch. Plus you feel like a space general while playing lol.

https://youtu.be/Nz16s6oCIlQ?si=lzSYIZZG4LtSLZUf

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