Tic-Tac-Toe Revised

Description

If you like strategy games with bad names, this is the game for you! A blend of the classic Tic-Tac-Toe and chess, this game will test your ability to outthink and outplay your friends. Its web interface allows you to play anywhere you can bring a internet-enabled device. Play now!

Rules

Note: The web app keeps track of all these rules and prevents players from making invalid moves.

Setup

The game is played on a 4×4 grid. The middle four pieces are initially controlled by the second player.

Turns

Each turn, a player may move a piece and take an action if possible. The first player must move a piece before taking an action. The second player must use an action before moving a piece. This means that on the first turn, the player cannot move a piece at all.

Moving

A piece can be moved to any of the up-to-eight neighboring tiles. Whenever a player places or moves a piece, the player takes control of the tile that the piece is placed or moved onto. A player may not move a piece onto another piece.

Actions

Actions require the player to own a certain configuration of tiles in order to be used. Currently, the only action is placing a new piece, which can be used if the player controls two adjacent tiles or on the first turn. A piece may only be placed on a neutral tile or a tile the player owns, but not on the opposing player's tiles.

Winning

A player wins by having four pieces in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Reflection

I wanted to create a game that plays like a more complex version of Tic-Tac-Toe: I feel that the most boring part of the game is that it's too easy to determine the correct move at any given time, but I like that all the information you need to determine that correct move is there in front of your face. It's like a logic puzzle that's just too easy—there's no fun in solving it.

My solution was to add the ability to move pieces and use actions other than just placing pieces. To add additional strategic depth, I decided that players would have to meet certain requirements in order to use actions—in the case of placing pieces, the requirement is controlling two adjacent tiles.

I wanted to add more actions (such as moving two pieces instead of one, placing a piece on the opponent's tile, moving an opponent's piece, swapping pieces, flipping rows/columns, or even taking control of an opponent's piece), but I found that it was far too difficult to balance them on my own. Additionally, during playtesting in class, I quickly realized that just having a single action is already complex enough for most players, and adding any more would be overwhelming. (However, this is now mitigated a bit by the rules tracking that I've added to the web app since presentations/playtesting that now keeps track of turn order and keeps players from making invalid moves (and tells them what they're doing wrong). Also, the text form of my rules do a much better job of explaining the rules than I do verbally.)

Given more time, I'd like to implement optional actions that can be toggled on and off (and maybe with custom requirements configurable by players before games) for customizable complexity in the game, which would also double as a mechanism to keep the game from becoming stale after a while (as Tic-Tac-Toe quickly becomes once children learn how to play). (From a code standpoint, I've already made it pretty easy for myself to add more actions; I just haven't spent the time to do it.) Right now, the game plays fine and is fun for anyone who is just bored of Tic-Tac-Toe, but with additional actions, it can scale to be a challenge for even the best logicians and have multiple different possible winning strategies.