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Ask YC: What do you think of this novel chess-like strategy game?

7 points by amichail ↗ HN
The game works like this:

* as in chess, each player gets 16 pieces placed in the same two rows on each side on an 8x8 board

* every piece starts out with a "1" on it

* you can think of each "1" piece as a king; once you lose all of your "1" pieces, you lose

* on each turn, you may either move a piece or increase the number on one of your pieces (provided you would still have at least one "1" piece left)

* a piece with a number k may move up to k steps horizontally or vertically or any combination thereof; every step taken must be on a free square except for the destination, which may contain an opponent piece to be captured

What do you think of this game (e.g., in terms of tactics, strategy, depth, etc.)?

11 comments

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brk
Can a piece move less than K steps? In think so, as you wrote "up to". Can a piece ever decrease in value? Like every move decreases its value.

Have you modeled this at all? It sounds somewhat fun and interesting, but many times with game development, you don't find the roadblocks and loopholes until you play.

amichail
Yes, it can move fewer than k steps. No, the value never decreases.

I have not modeled it yet, but probably will soon.

jsmcgd
Please do. I'd like to see how it works out.
cperciva
My impression is that this game, played well, would almost always end up in a stalemate. This game has too much symmetry in the powers of pieces; in chess one can attack pawn structures by picking off the pawns at the back since they aren't defended by other pawns, but in this game no such attack would be possible. Consequently, barring gross stupidity I can't see any way that a player could ever capture a piece without losing the piece which he used to attack; so pieces would end up being traded off until each side had only a single piece left.
amichail
Even if you never capture a piece without losing the piece, you have pieces of different importance and "one" piece(s) to protect.
doubleplus
my 2 cents on the strategy tip:

I'd turtle... Don't increase any of the 1's, move everything up one rank, then bounce pieces back and forth to the first rank, keeping each piece within 1 of at least two other pieces. I might have to have a couple 2's on the edges. That, or I'd try to restructure to a 3x5(+1) rather than a 2x8. I'd eventually have to increase a few numbers and break the shell a little bit, but by then my opponent will have far fewer 1's and a much more unstable structure from his attacks on me.

curi
doing that would lose. your opponent would make a bunch of high numbered pieces, and aim them all at the same place. he could attack that place with more than you defend it with.
daniel-cussen
Why don't you take a chessboard, get 16 pawns of each color, and try it out with a friend?
curi
because chess pieces don't store numbers. better use pieces of paper.
curi
my guess is that if you move forward, while your opponent levels up his pieces, you'll get slaughtered. you'll have less mobile pieces and be more spread out.

so both sides will level up. then they can't move anything very easily. move it forward and it's defended less times. meanwhile it's closer to your opponent, so attacked more times.

so they level up the back row of pieces too. capturing to cause trades isn't obviously useful. so level up all the way to 7 in back. the front row only needs 6. only leave a couple 1's. probably two of them.

then, finally, the side that moves first starts the capturing, and either wins or draws, dunno.

if there was ever a chance for the guy moving second to initiate trades to his advantage, the guy who moved first could have set up the same thing a move earlier and done it first.

not being very fair isn't the end of the world though. one of my favorite chess variants, Wild 5, is quite unfair to black. but that's ok, if you win a larger percentage of your black games than your opponent, you can win the series of games.

the symmetry is the main problem, and lack of incentive to advance. game will probably turn out boring.

harbinjer
Another novel chess-like strategy game is called Arimaa. Check that out for inspiration if you need it.