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

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.

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

> 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)

Offense can move any piece by one dot, following the lines, and cannot jump. Defense can move or jumping the pieces from the offense, in any direction, following the lines.

Jumping is obligatory, consecutive jumps are allowed (and also obligatory, e.g. you can't not take a double jump).

Game ends when:

1. The offense occupies all 9 squares of the fortress (offense wins)

2. There is no legal move for a player on their turn (that player loses)

3. The offense has fewer than 9 pieces left (defense wins)

For practiced players #1 is the most common end to a game and the offense gets a number of points equal to the remaining pieces; players then switch sides and the player with the most points wins.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peg_solitaire

I spent a lot of time collecting and breaking down game elements from all board games I could find, but as things go with ADD I then ran out of steam before I had any kind of functional prototype.

As always I highly recommend The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, and although its not his best book I really enjoyed the game aspects in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dnane might be a fit.

Feature requests:

- TwixT - just TwixT PP like on LittleGolem is fine (much easier to implement).

- Quoridor - a delightfully incomprehensible game.

- Larger board sizes. Hex starts being really fun at 19x19!

Questions and suggestions:

- On reddit you mention you "used AlphaZero-style methods to train the bots" - I suppose the networks are size-dependent? You could look into the many KataGo improvements[0].

- You mention the source code isn't released. If you released it, people could help add games.

Again, very well done, thank you!

[0]: https://github.com/lightvector/KataGo#training-history-and-r...

This sounded very intriguing - what are the chances of two people inventing the same abstract strategy game!? At the least there might be some interesting story about how they arrived at same idea.

Wikipedia phrases it differently though:

> Hex was invented by mathematician and poet Piet Hein in 1942 and later rediscovered and popularized by John Nash.

Ok less amazing

You should try to add the Gipf games at some point, they are very wonderful!

https://mancala.fandom.com/wiki/Hus

It is fun how it is deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. I implemented a game engine for it. Can discuss if you are interested.