Please have a look at our new two-player board game played on top of a geodesic sphere. Any comments are welcome! The spherical board is a bit hard to make, so we created a free windows program for it, including a computer opponent.
Renkula! webpage:
http://www.nbl.fi/~nbl924/renkula/
Tapani Raiko (and Jaakko Peltonen)
An abstract game... with a computer program with an AI... what's not to like?
Looks nifty! I'm going to fire this baby up as soon as I've got a free minute or two (and there's the rub...).
I cannot get the .exe file to open.
While I think the game is great in it's 3-dimensionality and has a great looking rulebook, it shouldn't be that big of a rulebook for something you can summarize in a few sentences. I suggest trying to come up with some sort of handicap for the red player and coming up with several variants/other games for the board as well.
A nice looking entry into the field of connection games. It looks fun
Colin
 | Power Creep, a Dungeon Pages adventure (0) by jasongreeno |
| Build your own [insert game genre here] (8) by questccg |
| Board Game Blueprint - New Episode Every Wednesday (21) by The Game Crafter |
| Premium Bullet & Premium Toxic Waste Board Game Pieces at The Game Crafter (0) by The Game Crafter |
 | PoA — Major shift back closer to FCE (2) by questccg |
| What “Should” Be in an RPG Design Book (11) by lewpuls |
| Blank Poker Card Sale - 3 Cents Each! (0) by The Game Crafter |
| Blank Playing Cards - Bridge 57mm x 89mm UK (1) by questccg |
| Finally returned after all these years (1) by DyminoMonsters2004 |
| State of the let-off Union - November 2024 (0) by let-off studios |
| Shoppe: The Simulation of Guilds (1) by questccg |
| The fine line between a game and a simulation (22) by X3M |
| Only 24 hours left to bid on games for the Extra Life Charity Auction (0) by The Game Crafter |
| Songs of Conquest is now 60% off plus an additional discount for... (5) by questccg |
| Returned the reMarkable 2 and purchased the BOOX Go 10.3 (3) by questccg |
| Happy Halloween 2024 (0) by questccg |
| Epic Metal Monster Coins - Now on Kickstarter - Created by The Game Crafter (0) by The Game Crafter |
| DuelBotz: Sample New Card (12) by questccg |
| 2 levels for an unit (wargames) (6) by X3M |
| Dragon Spark Playthrough (0) by The Game Crafter |
| New Board Game Pieces - Premium Water Droplet & Premium Blood Droplet (0) by The Game Crafter |
| Designer with an 'almost' ready product (18) by questccg |
| Protospiel Madison - Only 17 Days Away! (0) by The Game Crafter |
| New Board Game Pieces - Premium Milk Bottle & Premium Beer Mug (0) by The Game Crafter |
| Testing chat GPT for mechanics searching (6) by larienna |
Thanks for the comments! Could you tell about the computer you are trying to run the .exe on? The most likely reason is that your video card does not support DirectX 9, sorry for the strict requirement.
Perhaps it is a good idea to put the actual rules on the cover of the rulebook or something.
A related game Hex has a handicap system where the second player to move can swap colours instead of making a move. That way, the first player balances the game by making a worse move (near a corner instead of the middle of the board). I guess in Renkula! this would simplify into forcing the first move to a pentagon in practice.
An obvious variant of the game is that stones are placed simply one at a time and any loop wins (like in Havannah). This variant lacks the elegant property that the main game has: one and only one of the players has a winning loop when the board is filled with stones. This variant might still be quite nice to play in practice. Unfortunately the same AI opponent cannot be used for this variant (because it is based on randomly filling the board with stones).