Chess variants
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Caïssa | Christian Freeling | Short | Caïssa belongs to the "Atlantis Triplets", three miniature chess variants based on a shrinking playing field. |
| Chad | Christian Freeling | Medium | Chad is the result of an exercise in mimimalism. The question that triggered it was: "How much is actually needed to make a chess variant?" |
| Chakra | Christian Freeling | Medium | Chakra is an ordinary chess variant with one extraordinary piece: the Transmitter. Consisting of two parts, it is a portal through which pieces can warp. |
| Chess960 | Robert James Fischer | Medium | This notorious chess variant by Robert James Fischer bears testimony to the fact that great players do not necessarily make great inventors. |
| Chess+ | Nick Bentley
Christian Freeling | Medium | The opening protocol of Chess+ is an alternative for the random set-up of Chess960. Apart from that the rules are those of Chess. |
| Congo | Demian Freeling | Short | Invented a couple of weeks before the inventor's eighths birthday, this exotic Xiangqi variant of sorts is great fun throughout. |
| Cyclix | Christian Freeling | Short | Cyclix, the third of the "Atlantis Triplets", recycles captured pieces via the king, effectively keeping them in play all the time. |
| King's Colour | Christian Freeling | Short | If you thought Loonybird would be the weirdest one here, think again :). |
| Loonybird | Christian Freeling | Medium | The chess pawn moves different from the way it captures. In Loonybird all pieces except the king move different from the way they capture. |
| Rotary | Christian Freeling | Medium | Two rows of very ordinary chess pawns lend some strategic grip to this highly tactical game of rotational pieces. |
| Royal Guard | Chris Huntoon
Christian Freeling | Medium | Royal Guard is building on a chess board divided in four sub-grids combined with a feature of King's Colour. The result is still funny but the implementation here gives a more serious game. |
| Shakti | Christian Freeling | Short | Shakti belongs to the "Atlantis Triplets", three miniature chess variants based on a shrinking playing field. |
| XiangQi | traditional | Medium | Xiangqi is the traditional Chinese variant of Chess. It somehow froze into its archaic form but yet has a large following, at least in China. |
Games of annihilation
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Armenian Draughts | traditional | Medium | A game that relates to Turkish Draughts like Frisian relates to International Draughts. It introduces diagonal movement in an otherwise straight game. A definite step towards modern games like Croda and Dameo. |
| Bashni | traditional | Medium | Bashni is a colomn checkers game based on the framework of Shashki, the Russian 8x8 draughts variant. |
| Croda | Ljuban Dediç | Medium | Without the late Ljuban Dediç's game Croda, a brilliant attempt by a renown Draughts master to save Draughts from from fading into insignificance, Dameo would not have existed. |
| Crossfire | Christian Freeling | Medium | This hexvariant of Sid Sackson's game Focus replaces the 'ceiling' of 5 for the height of a stack, by one equal to the number of adjacent cells, which makes aiming large stacks at 'low capacity' cells very profitable and a focuspoint in terms of tactics and strategy. |
| Explocus | Martin Medema | Short | Few games are as dramatic and capricious as the late Martin Medema's game Explocus, a lucky merger of Sid Sackson's game Focus and and obscure seventies game called Explosion.
We also feature the hexversion Hexplocus. |
| Fanorona | traditional | Short | Fanorona is the national game of Madagascar and the 9x5 'Fanoron-Tsivy', the widest-known variant, is the mother of all forms of contact checkers (which to our knowledge amounts to precisely one other game, namely Bushka). |
| Focus | traditional | Medium | Sid Sackson's game, once marketed brilliantly as 'the never get board game', is in fact slightly overrated. The absence of 'advantageous sub-goals to be achieved as calculable signposts along the way' makes it an interesting but largely tactical game. |
| Harzdame | Benedikt Rosenau | Medium | Here the diagonally opposed forces move and capture orthogonally. Strategy revolves around promotion, of which there's a lot due to the special promotion squares. |
| HexEmergo | Christian Freeling | Medium | This flawed masterpiece, the hex version of Emergo, is definitely somewhat 'over the top' tactically - that's in fact the very source of its flaw. In turnbased play white definitely has an advantage.
Not so in over the board play though, because the advantage relies on trial and error. |
| HexOust | Mark Steere | Medium | Hexoust is the hexversion of Mark Steere's game Oust. Some players like the latter better, but reference may well be a matter of taste. |
| Killer Draughts | Members of the Dutch Draughts community | Medium | This is International Draughts with a 'specially demoted' king. The net result is that two kings win against one, but the rule cannot avoid the smell of a band aid. |
| Lasca | Emanuel Lasker | Medium | Like its pedecessor Bashni, Lasca results from introducing column checkers into a known framework. In Lasca's case the framework is that of Anglo-American Checkers - which serves it worse. The late Emanuel Lasker was Chess world champion from 1894 to 1921. |
| Loca | Christian Freeling | Short | Loca is a unique Checkers variant because it features man-king hybrids, pieces that move short but capture long. It is an 'entrance into and endgame' in that it starts with a barrage of mutual captures. The game was accidentally invented by Christian Freeling in 2020. |
| Meridians | Kanare Kato | Short | A 'line of sight' game of annihilation by Kanare Kato that sees paths between pieces in much the same way as liberties are seen Go. No paths? You're dead. It gives rise to a very fundamental game. |
| Pit of Pillars | Christian Freeling | Medium | Pit of Pillars is a colunm stacking game based on a new principle of capture with very inticate tactics. Players capture the opponent's men in mixed stacks, while retrieving own men as reserves. Captures result in the emergence of Pillars to assist the capturing player in making more captures … but don't make too many! |
| Pommel | Michael Howe | Short | Pommel is a hexagonal checkers variant invented by Michael Howe of Connecticut, USA in 2010. It has an interesting feature found in no other checkers variant, namely linear capture by leaping. |
| Turkish Draughts | traditional | Medium | Where the European branch evolved on a diagonal sub-grid, turkish evolved on a straight grid. Although there's much to say for the latter, Turkish never got to the status that International Draughts once had as an international sport. |
| Zola | Mark Steere | Short | Zola is a simple and drawless game of annihilation invented in 2021. The inventor's claim of 'little or no' turn order imbalance has been challenged by AI tests where a slight first player advantage was established. |
Territory games
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Amazons | Walter Zamkauskas | Medium | The Game of the Amazons was invented in 1988 by Walter Zamkauskas of Argentina. In the game the 'amazons' move to wall off territory to keep room to move. Eventually one of the players will fail. |
| Astralis | Phil Leduc | Medium | Astralis, invented in 2021, is an abstract, area-control, strategy game of space exploration, expansion, and extraction for two players, inspired by sci-fi games such as Alpha Omega, Twilight Imperium and Eclipse. |
| Cannons & Bullets | Christian Freeling | Short | Cannons & Bullets was inspired by the placement protocol of Mike Zapawa's Tumbleweed and it even emerged with the same goal. But it is smaller and has a very different behaviour, less sticky, more jumpy. |
| Desdemona | Rey Alicea | Medium | Desdemona was invented by Rey Alicea in 2020 as a natural merger of Amazons and Othello into a hybrid that actually works. |
| Dominions | Christian Freeling | Medium | Contrary to appearances, Dominions is a Go variant. The set of pieces it is played with is provided by the China Labyrinth. |
| HexSygo | Christian Freeling | Medium | Few attempts to implement a Go variant on a hex grid have ever succeeded, and equally few to make one based on 'flip capture'. Because of the 'life saving' properties of the Symple move protocol, Sygy succeeds at both simultaneously. |
| Keil | Luis Bolaños Mures | Long | Keil is a Go-like territory game invented by Luis Bolaños Mures in 2019. It introduces the idea of linked cells, which preserves crosscuts and ko by reducing the natural connectivity of the hex grid. |
| Lotus | Christian Freeling | Short | This is Medusa's support act, a simple Go variant with a small body of rules that works like the mechanism of a Swiss watch. |
| MacBeth | Christian Freeling | Short | Translating Othello to the hexgrid wasn't all that difficult. The game 'carves' its own grid. Diagonal capture has been omitted for clarity, reducing the number of directions in which captures can be made to even less than the average in the square game. |
| Medusa | Christian Freeling | Medium | Medusa is a Go variant without any ambiguity in its rules, and with the option to actually move groups. Its branch density is staggering, without making the game anymore difficult to 'read' for humans. |
| Mu levis | Christian Freeling | Medium | Mu levis is a multi-player territory game. It has a wild two-player relative that you can find right below. |
| Mu velox | Christian Freeling | Long | Mu velox is a new generation abstract game, one that can only be played using an applet. It may well be called a hybrid between a strategy game and a pinball machine. It is the most unusual game in the Pit, seriously funny. |
| Notubytu | Christian Freeling | Medium | This is a simple territorial placement game with 8-directional custodian capture of single stones. Proceedings are largely governed by a simple restiction: 2 by 2 configurations of one colour are not allowed. |
| Othello | Lewis Waterman
John W. Mollet Esq. | Short | More than a century ago a game called 'Reversi' appeared in England that later was renamed Othello for commercial reasons. There's a dispute about its origin: a mr. Lewis Waterman claimed to be the inventor, while a John W. Mollet Esq. claimed it to be merely an adaption of his game 'Annexation'. Will the truth ever emerge? Who really cares? |
| Pletore | Luis Bolaños Mures | Medium | Pletore started out as 'square Stigmergy', but has its definition of 'controlled points' modified to compensate for the smaller number of lines of sight. Both Stigmergy and Pletore are inspired by Mike Zapawa's Tumbleweed. |
| Renegado | Christian Freeling | Short | Renegado introduces neutral pieces in MacBeth. The core idea was taken from Joao Pedro Neto's Othello variant Desdemona. |
| Square Off | Christian Freeling | Short | A territory game based on a configuration theme of completing squares. Simple, fast and requiring no more than a chess board, a checkers set and a number of markers. |
| Triccs | Christian Freeling | Medium | This game actually served to momentarily store the "one bound - one free" opening protocol after its emergence. It's a simple game with Othello-like capture. |
| Tumbleweed | Mike Zapawa | Medium | Tumbleweed was invented in 2020 by Mike Zapawa who also invented Slyde. The game is based on 'line of sight' placement and capture. A very organic game based on a very original concept. |
| XiaGo | Christian Freeling | Medium | The thought that led straight to XiaGo was "what if the 'holes' in the Medusa board that are there to reduce the liberties of the hex grid, were movable? XiaGo is still Go in many respects, but the movable neutrals add a new dimension not seen before in a Go variant. |
Largest Group Cascading
Contestants' largest groups are compared in size and number.
If equal the count cascades down to the next largest groups, and the next, till a decision is arrived at.
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Catchup | Nick Bentley | Medium | In Catchup and in the other games in this section, as long as they differ in size, players' territories consists of their largest groups. If these are the same size, then players' territory consists of (their largest group plus) their 'next in size', and so on till an unequal territory count results. |
| China Octangle | Christian Freeling | Medium | China Octangle and its twin China Squares are representatives of a new class of boardgames that can no longer be played 'over the board'. The boards are solutions of a puzzle called the Octopuszle, that happen to be natural habitats for a placement protocol that offers a choice between a few strong placements or many weaker ones. |
| China Tangle | Christian Freeling | Short | China Tangle is a merger between the China Labyrinth and Nick Bentley's game Strands, triggered by the invention of the last one in May 2022. |
| Crossbars | Christian Freeling | Medium | Crossbars compares groups that are called 'bars', straight orthogonal lines of like coloured stones. White counts horizontal bars, Black vertical ones. A modest diagonal custodian capture option spices things up. |
| Migong | Luis Bolaños Mures
Christian Freeling | Medium | Migong is based on the set of pieces of the China Labyrinth, like the much earlier game Dominions. It is a co-invention with Luis Bolaños Mures, a fellow inventor I've always admired and of whom we feature Ayu and Keil. |
| Permute | Eric Silverman | Medium | Permute also mirrors Catchup's goal and also has a new and original core behaviour: the twist. Four stones in a 2x2 square are rotated 90 degrees in either direction, after which on of them is 'bandaged' so it cannot be part of a twist again. |
| Qascade | Christian Freeling | Medium | Qascade's also ends with 'the largest group, cascading'. It uses the 'one-bound, one-free' opening protocol to guarantee balance, an even distribution and termination, and 'one placement, one twist' to play out the game. Draws cannot occur. |
| Slyde | Mike Zapawa | Medium | Slyde mirrors the goal of Catchup but has a new and original core behaviour: the swap. Not the turn order balancing swap but the 'swap move'. |
Connection games
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Gonnect |
João Pedro Neto |
Medium |
Gonnect, sometimes described as 'a love child of Go and Hex', was invented by João Pedro Neto in 2000. It basically links the rules of Go to a different object: to estabish an orthogonal connection between opposite sides of the board, left-right or bottom-up as the case may be. |
| KnightVision |
Christian Freeling |
Medium |
KnightVision is a case of serendipity, a lucky interaction of a 'knightvision' placement protocol that enables the creation of 'axes' to capture opponent's cells and the goal of the game of Hex. It adds drama to an incredibly deep game without affecting its depth. 'Knight vision' takes a bit of getting used to, but the reward is well worth it. |
| Lox |
Luis Bolaños Mures
Steven Metzger
Christian Freeling |
Medium |
This one is even better than KnightVision and again it's the goal of the game of Hex. But in this Line of Sight based co-invention with Luis Bolaños Mures and Steven Metzger the capture option is embedded instead of added, and in a conceptual sense you can't beat that. |
| Query |
Christian Freeling |
Short | There are several connection games using the 'alquerque' board. This one's distinguishing feature is the choice a player has to either place one stone on a connectivity-8 point, or two stones on two connectivity-4 points. |
| Rondo | Christian Freeling | Short | Characterised as 'a game of circular reasoning' it has making a connection as its main goal, but sending your opponent hopping in circles or blocking him completely will also do. |
| Scaffold | Andrew Lannan | Medium | Scaffold is a regular top-to-bottom or left-to-right square connection game using a placement protocol with a very clever generic solution to the diagonal cross cut problem. |
| Slither | Corey Clark | Medium | Slither is a connection game invented by Corey Clark in 2010. It emerges from the combination of a clever condition and a clever move protocol. The result is a very dynamic game full of surprising tactics. |
| Symple Hex | Benedikt Rosenau | Medium | This game is based on Hex in that it has the same object. However, it replaces the normal move protocol and the pie rule by the Symple move protocol and its embedded balancing rule. |
Looping games
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| Hoop | Michael Amundsen
Alek Erickson | Short | A game in which the players, Black and White, compete to complete a loop of neutral stones by claiming cells for their colour and and placing neutrals. |
| KnightShade | Christian Freeling | Short | KnightShade is the third game based on the 'knight vision' placement protocol that first appeared in the game KnightVision. The goal is not a Hex-like connection, but rather the creation of a single loop that is touching the edge while rounding the centre. |
| Loops 'n Leaps | Christian Freeling | Medium | Loops 'n Leaps is another descendant of Cannons & Bullets made in one afternoon because 'loop games' are so hard to make, according to the dominant forces at BGG. |
| Noose | Michael Amundsen
Alek Erickson | Short | A game in which the players, White and Red, compete to complete a loop of their own colour by placing stones and flipping 'flanked arcs'. |
Blockade games
This section includes games where the object is to have the last move.
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| DropZone | Christian Freeling | Short | A simple 'last to move wins' game based on the square set of the China Labyrinth. It comes with a very clever and wholly dualistic form that emphasises its puzzle origins. |
| Grabber | Christian Freeling | Short | A combinatorial quickie, related to Konane. On small boards the second player wins 7 out of 10, and the Axiom program playing against itself suggests that this behaviour casts a long shadow. However, on a 6x6 board humans would have a hard time applying this knowledge. |
| Konane | traditional | Short | A traditional combinatorial game played in Hawai, based on draughtslike capture. Every move must be a capture. Last to move wins. Columnified, the game became Grabber. |
| Mattock | Drew Edwards | Short | Mattock is an intruiging game invented by Drew Edwards in 2020. It shines a new light on an old goal: increasingly constricting the opponent, step by step, till the last player to move wins. |
| MiniMancala | Christian Freeling | Short | You can play this game against an invincible program. You can trick the program by instructing it to occasionally (or always) play random moves. |
| Monkey Trap | Christian Freeling | Short | Monkey Trap, a miniature relative of Amazons, is a fast fun game for the younger ones that can even be played as a pencil and paper game, with pennies for monkeys. |
| Pilare | Jorge Gómez Arrausi | Short | Pilare is a board game designed by Basque game author Jorge Gómez Arrausi. It won a proxime accessit award in the games creation contest of Tona, 2005. Its mechanics bear a strong similarity to mancala games. |
| WedgeLock | Christian Freeling | Short | This is a transposition of sorts of DropZone, based on the triangular set of the China Labyrinth. It hasn't got colour duality as DropZone, and thed blue and yellow pieces each player has consist of two half-sets that don't make a whole one. Like having two left legs. |
Games with various other goals
|
| Name
| Inventor
| Time
| Description
|
| China Grove | Christian Freeling | Short | China Grove is a merger between the China Tangle and Symple, accidentally invented in Januari 2023. Like Symple it is largely territorial. |
| FlowerShop | Mike Zapawa | Short | FlowerShop was invented in 2021 by Mike Zapawa who also invented Slyde and Tumbleweed. The game uses the 12* protocol, features partial and impartial pieces and features a factorial score. |
| Hanniball | Christian Freeling | Medium | It isn't easy to create an abstract game with the flow of an actual game of soccer. Hanniball, a joint effort with Arty Sandler of iGGameCenter, came the other way around: because it displayed the flow of an actual game of soccer, the game was presented as such. |
| HexSymple | Christian Freeling | Medium | In HexSymple the absence of diagonal cutting points makes for tactics that differ from those of its ancestor Symple, but they're serving an equally deep strategy. |
| King's Castle | Christian Freeling | Short | This is a 'Capture the Throne' game in which two rivalling fractions contest the possesion of the throne after the king's death. All in the abstract of course. |
| Mephisto | Christian Freeling | Very short | You need a domino set, five different colored pawns, five correspondingly colored dice, a one minute sandtimer and as many beer infested bèta-nerds as the room will accommodate. Ans you really need them because there's no app. :( |
| Morelli | Richard Moxham | Medium | Morelli, by the late Richard Moxham, is an 'occupation' game in which players fight for the Throne. Their weapons are capture and configuration and the Throne may change ownership several times during play. The game's theme is refrehingly new, and its tactics support a fair range of strategies. |
| Multiplicity | Christian Freeling | Medium | The goal of Multiplicity is to have a higher score than the opponent. The score is the product of the sizes of all a player's groups. The game uses the 'one-bound, one-free' move protocol. Its strategy revolves around not connecting groups! |
| Polar | Dieter Stein | Medium | Polar is an intruiging placement game invented by Dieter Stein in 2015-2017. Like Starweb that you can find in the ArenA, it uses triangular scoring. |
| Rainbow Chase | Mike Zapawa | Medium | Rainbow Chase is an intruiging mancala game invented by Mike Zapawa in December 2021. Its characteristic feature is that the pits are coloured, affecting which colour beads, if any, may be sowed into them. |
| Swish & Squeeze | Christian Freeling | Short | Swish and Squeeze are twin bead capture games, but no mancalas. With simple material and without an excessive need to make a meal of it, they are very sharp, well balanced, finite and drawless. |
| Trackgammon | Christian Freeling | Short | My first game, before I even became obsessed, is a backgammon type game for two to four, on an each on his own basis. More or less the only dice game in my oeuvre, or one would have to classify Mephisto as such. Unfortunately it has no app. :( |
| Xodd | Luis Bolaños Mures | Medium | Xodd and Yodd are 'dynamic goal' connection games invented by Luis Bolaños Mures in 2011. They may be considered essential non-parity games. Both players control both colors and inverting the goal of the game results in essentially the same game. |
| Yodd | Luis Bolaños Mures | Medium | Xodd and Yodd are 'dynamic goal' connection games invented by Luis Bolaños Mures in 2011. They may be considered essential non-parity games. Both players control both colors and inverting the goal of the game results in essentially the same game. |
| Zumo | Christian Freeling | Medium | A placement and movement game of energy transition. Energy is sucked in by placement and directed out towards the goal of pushing one opposing piece over the edge. |
