Ideas for an abstract strategy game based on raindrops

A word of warning - this is an abstarct game with no hidden information and no random factor , just like chess. So look out for the old analysis paralysis here. The search depth might be quite high also, what with the multiple boards or 'terrain', so you could have players having to analyse multiple possible moves to a significant number of turns in the future.

You'll need some way of either reducing the number of sensible seeming moves to a reasonable number and/or keeping the search depth reasonable, unles sthat is you want a mind melter of a game aimed at the sort of people who have brains like computers.

One mechanism that comes to mind is a mod to hedge's suggested rules. Instead of being able to move a stack of your choice, you are able to make a move which 'tilts' the board in one of eight directions - 4 resulting in all stacks moving straight towards the nominated edge, and 4 which result in all stacks moving diagonally towards the nominated corner.

This kind of fits with the water theme, and reduces the scope of possible moves, instead placing the emphasis on the search depth. Perhaps only 4 tilt directions would be better...

There are various other ways you could introduce elements of abstract physics to alter how droplets move and behave, such as changing the droplet weight needed to drop levels (call this 'surface tension' - hey - cool name for the game!), or change speed of stack movement (call this viscosity...)

Another idea to add a new twist (though it does not help with analysis complexity - probably makes it worse actually) would be for placing of little walls that stick up along square intersections. These stop droplet movement in that direction. They could either be deployed or present on the board to begin with.

It is a very nice idea. I like abstracts too and this could be a very beautiful game.

I jotted down concepts for a game similar to this several months ago, under the working title "Gravity". The inspiration being that a celestial object exerts attractive forces on nearby objects, the more mass, the greater the gravity generated. When objects are drawn together, they merge to form a more massive object. When objects get too massive, they implode upon themselves.

Players start with a set of objects in their colour placed on the board in predetermined positions (all of which are out of range of each other's influence.) Each player has a stockpile of objects in their colour that they may place into empty zones on the board. When an object is placed, the player must resolve the movement that is created by the gravity exerted by and upon the object. If objects become too massive, they implode and are removed from the board into the discards pile.

Endgame comes when each player has exhausted their stockpile of objects and made the final movement resolutions. Players count up the objects that they "control" - that is, objects which their colour makes up over 75% of the composition. Split objects go unscored. The more mass an object has, the more points it is worth.

I started writing out the system for resolving that movement but found that it became quite complex fairly quickly, and after some frustration, shifted Gravity to the backburner.

I never really took the idea anywhere but was reminded of it by this thread. Perhaps I'll dust Gravity off and look at it again. Your raindrops concept is very refreshing and I will keep an eye on the interesting resolutions you seem to be quickly developing. Thanks for the inspiration!

~Josh

Well, I read the rules and I'm sorry to say I was a little underwhelmed. Obviously I haven't played it yet, so take the following with a pinch of salt.

I appreciate that you have taken a strong stand against the AP problem, but in the process it seems that you may have lost some of the elegance and potential of the original premise.

In particular I was not keen on the capture mechanism, which it seems has been borrowed from Go. Firstly, this mechanism did not seem to fit with the water theme. Secondly, the rule about not being able to move onto or over opposing pieces combined with this capture mechanism seems likely to result in a somewhat static game, once the opposing forces have met in the middle of the board, which also seems to counteract the theme.

I'll be interested to see how your first playtest goes.

Yeah, I was having the same sort of problems for my recent game "Halo", which is vaguely modeled after distribution of galaxies in dark matter halos. The first major problem I had was too much frredom of movement. When I clamped down on that, I had unbearable pattern-finding. When I corrected that, I found that play had compressed onto a tiny section of the board, eliminating the possability of creating the needed formations. When I fixed that, the game spread out too far, and the pieces stopped interacting at all. Once I balanced that, I found my victory conditions let the game fizzle out, rather than end with some drama.

Sigh...

Abstracts are a challenge for the simple reason that, with so few rules to work with, the slightest change in one of them completely alters the way they function. So I'd suggest finding one single rule in your game that makes it feel less like your inspiration. What about raindrops intruiged you that this game doesn't do? For instance, in v1, half of the pieces no longer interact with each other like the raindrops do, making them feel less like droplets overall.

I'd suggest altering a single rule at a time, but sometimes radical action needs to be taken...

I'd shy away from the tilting concept, cool as it sounds. Any move that alters the entire board will take away most of the clarity in the game, and replace focussed consideration with an attempt to picture what 49 changes to the board might look like each turn. That's asking a bit much.

I'd suggest freeing up your movement a bit, letting the game end more easily. Perhaps a piece could "roll through" one opposing piece of the same size per move, but gets stuck beneath a second, unable to move until the piece above it is moved?

Also, some questions. What is a size-5 or -6 piece cannot move its full move without leaving the board? Though it seems implicit this cannot happen, it would add some tactical depth is the opposition could force enemy pieces together, giving the player no choice but to roll them off the board's edge. Pieces rolled off the edge are returned to the starting zone as indovdual drops. This would give the players an interesting tactic (forcing unwanted combining among the enemy), and introduce a backgammon-like element of continual renewal of racing pieces.

As to your capture rule, It seems odd to me, and not fitting with the theme. Surrounded groups might be forced to combine into a single large piece, though. Still, this seems unlikely, since, unlike Go, the pieces aren't hanging out very long in one spot. I'd reconsider this.

I'd avoid the different colored pieces altogether. They are raindrops, afterall.

What I've learned from watching raindrops on a window is that the bigger ones move faster than the little ones. To this end, I've come up with the following rules for a simple, abstract raindrop game.

What you need:
A square grid (8x8, 9x9, 400x400, whatever).
A bunch of stackable pieces.
Two players.

Setup:
Place the board between the two players, and skew it 45 degrees so that a corner faces each player. One corner not occupied by a player represents the 'top' and the other represents the bottom. Place the pieces off the board where both players can reach them.

Play:
On your turn, you both introduce two new raindrops onto the board, and move one drop already on the board.

Introducing drops is done by placing two drops along one of the edges at the top of the board. It does not matter where you place them otherwise, you may place them separately, stacked together, or even stacked on top of an existing drop on the board, but they must be located along one of the edges that touches the top corner of the board.

You may then move one drop down the window. You may not move a piece that you have just played. If there are no eligible drops to play, your turn ends.

Movement is done orthoganally (like a rook), but always down the window (raindrops don't move upwards). You must make all of this movement in a straight line (no bends). The number of spaces a drop moves is determined by its size, i.e. a drop that is made up of one piece moves one space, while a drop that is made up of five pieces moves five spaces. There is no maximum size to a drop.

If a drop collides with another (moves into its space), movement stops, and that drop's pieces are added to the drop already in that space. Drops cannot be separated once they have been joined.

If you move a drop off of the bottom of the board (one of the two edges touching the bottom corner), you get to keep it, and you earn a number of points equal to the size of the drop.

Winning:
You win the game once you have earned a number of points equal to or greater than a preset score agreed to at the beginning of the game (i.e. first to 25).

This thread highlights a lot obout why I love abstract game design. HyveMynd has one idea, I've got another, Julius has a third. All playable, all based on the same theme, and all striving for simplicity. Sweet.

Julius: Like the sound of your game. I'd test it, to see how detirministic it is, based on the fact that the pieces are uniform and shared. It seems like the obvious strategy would be to place near the corners, and then run a steady stream of pieces off the board, since the route is so short. Playtesting this game would be interesting.

Hyve: This is a definate improvement.

Man, Julius, your game sounds pretty good and very strategic. I may have to break out an old set of checkers and try my hand at this game!

You could just use a lone piece (drop of size one) to "block" a player who builds up something too big, and should they be foolish enough to move into its space you could capture it yourself.

I'm having trouble envisioning how the 3rd space in cannot be stopped. You'd have to grow it to a size of four before you could move it off the board, but growing a piece in that manner would leave you vulnerable (your opponent could simply move it off the edge to capture it). If you choose to try and move it closer to the edge while it is smaller, you also would leave yourself vulnerable to your opponent capturing the piece.

The most important rules of my game involve what pieces cannot be moved. Remember: Drops you play at the start of your turn (including an existing drop that is grown by adding a new piece) cannot be moved. Also, moving a drop into a space occupied by another drop ends your turn once they are combined (the drop stops moving in that space).

So far, with playtesting, I've found that the board builds up very large amounts of water, but never enough to move off the board. There's always a breaking point, however (what with adding two, but moving one).

Through this playtesting, I've come up with a rules modification that makes play considerably more interesting:

Placing Drops:
You may add a new piece anywhere on the board, not just the top edge.

Also, I've discovered that the game works just fine with more than two players, though it feels less strategic and more frantic.

Ah, I didn't see that placing a piece onto another drop ends your turn. I was thinking that the first player places a drop, and then the second player could just add to that drop and move it. This process would continue until the predetirmined player scored the drop. If, as you say, players cannot move a drop they've just added to, the game changes quite a bit.

Allowing players to play anywhere, not just in the top row, is also a huge improvement, allowing the blocking of movement as the pieces combine. This is far better.

Why not use "water" itself in a unique way?