Let’s have some different iPhone board games!

I like board games, and I’d like to play some against my iPhone. (My secret shame is that I’m actually rather bad at board games, but the silver lining is that it doesn’t take much of an AI to provide me with a challenge!) The Board Games sub-category of the iPhone App Store has over 300 offerings. But if you filter out the ones that are really single-player puzzles, or that only let humans play each other, or that implement chess or checkers [neither of which I like] … there aren’t many left.

Especially if you then filter out the many duplicates. For example, I’m surprised at how many versions of Ataxx there are. Ataxx is a fairly obscure game (at least I thought it was!) but there are at least four different clones of it on the store, including a new one called Spoilage that just showed up. Why is that? Don’t get me wrong, Ataxx is a really good game, with simple but unusual mechanics, and good tactical difficulty despite its short play time. I’ve played it online and I have iBacteria on my iPhone.

But why are so many developers picking the same game? With a better-known game like chess, checkers, Go or Othello/Reversi, I can understand going for the name recognition. But those wanting to develop different abstract strategy games have literally thousands to choose from. Don’t believe me? Peruse my

Big List Of Abstract Board Games You Should Implement And Sell Me:

Dieter Stein’s games Accasta, Abande and Attangle form a trilogy, as they have similar mechanics and can be played on the same board (your choice of hexagonal or square). Of these, Abande is my favorite, and one of my favorite abstract board games overall.
Cameron Browne has designed dozens of brain-twisting games with a topological flavor—Truchet is a great example, with a really cool looking board.
Dutch mathematician Christian Freeling has developed many very interesting games, which are described on his MindSports website.
Arimaa is a fairly new chess-like game with some very strange mechanics, where pieces can push and pull opposing pieces into holes to defeat them.
Mark Steere has a good-sized collection of board games too.
Phutball, aka “Philosopher’s Football” is an interesting game with a loose soccer theme, invented by eminent mathematicians Elwyn Berlekamp, John Horton Conway, and Richard Guy.
Board Game Design Competition Winners from boardgames.about.com. (My favorite of these is Symbio.)
The Piecepack game system has a ton of games written for it.
…and if those aren’t enough, there’s the World Of Abstract Games website, which compiles literally hundreds of games, old and new, neatly categorized.

So please! Go develop some of these, and sell them on the App Store, and I’ll buy them! (Especially Abande. I really want a patient Abande opponent to help me improve my play!)

Even if you’re not a game developer, most of these games are easy to play with boards you either have already or can print out. (And if you have access to a laser-cutter, so much the better…)

Footnote: I haven’t mentioned Go. I really like Go, although I’m miserable at it, and every time a Go-related app comes out I read its description eagerly; but so far none of them have AI play. They either let two humans play each other, or they merely play back saved Go matches to study. I suspect there’s a technical problem here: Go is notoriously difficult to program AI for, and the only readily available implementation I know of is GNU Go. But this is GPL-licensed, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the GPL were fundamentally incompatible with the iPhone’s application model, since it’s impossible to modify or recompile other people’s apps. Anyone know for sure?

Footnote 2: And WTF is up with all the tic-tac-toe apps? News flash, everyone: Tic-Tac-Toe has been solved! No one ever wins a game if played correctly, and anyone with the brains to operate an iPhone should be able to play correctly. So what’s the appeal? Are parents buying it as an easy way to win against their four-year-old kids?

Previously: Web Apps Need More UI, Not Less
Next Post: Games, Games, Games, Games!

By: Jens Alfke
On: November 13, 2008
at: 3:47 pm
As: Games, Computers
See: 18 comments;

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This is the blog of Jens Alfke.

Introverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving. I live to make things: most often software, sometimes designs or mixes or stories or photos. (I wish I could make music.)

Father, husband. My home is a nest of family. Outside is overrun with flowers and vines and shade trees, inside with books and CDs and kids’ drawings and game pieces and game cartridges.

Worker, dreamer. I’m driven by visions of things that could be.

Contact

Send friendly correspondence to thought-palace at this domain.

On Thu, Nov 13 at 4pm,
fluffy said —

There are many misconceptions about the GPL. There is nothing about the GPL which inhibits an iPhone app (even a paid one!) from using GPLed code - the GPL only requires that anyone who has access to the binary be able to get the source on request. So, someone could very easily make an iPhone port and put the source online, and anyone else with the iPhone SDK could make use of the source to modify it and release their own version to the App Store (which would probably be summarily rejected) and so on.

On Thu, Nov 13 at 4pm,
Jens Alfke said —

@fluffy — Interesting. Then someone should definitely do this. The App Store would be a good environment for the GPL since you can realistically charge money for your app even if it’s open source, due to the inability of most users to install from source. (I guess there’s always the danger of another developer cloning the app and charging a buck less, but at least you’d always be ahead of them with new releases.)

Yeah, although also consider the ill will you’d generate in the F/OSS movement. People might complain about it on Slashdot! (Oh no!)

On Thu, Nov 13 at 5pm,
Jens Ayton said —

There are in fact two problems with the GPL:
* Until recently, you couldn’t publish source because of the FNDA, so it was impossible to adhere to the GPL. This is now apparently resolved, although having read the new NDA I’m not entirely clear on whether it actually does what it’s said to.
* Software distributed via the App Store can’t use GPLv3 code due to the “tivoization clause”. This is not an issue for GNU Go in its current form, though.

On Thu, Nov 13 at 5pm,
fluffy said —

Oh, right, the FNDA might still be a problem (though it probably isn’t, as long as you’re only releasing app code and no system headers or whatever).

On Thu, Nov 13 at 9pm,
Tim Gogolin said —

I didn’t spend a lot of time at the Abande site, so I might have missed something (and IANAL), but it looks like the license might be difficult to work with when making an iPhone version… “No derivative works”? “No commercial purposes?”. There does appear to be a way to circumvent these restrictions if you get the authors explicit permission, but from a quick look, it doesn’t seem like an appealing game to write an app for… (maybe that’s why there are all those chess, checkers and tic-tac-toe games?)

On Thu, Nov 13 at 10pm,
Jens Alfke said —

@Tim — Oops, I didn’t double-check the copyright terms on all those games before I posted the links. Still, many are more freely useable; for example, all of Mark Steere’s games permit commercial use as long as you keep the rules the same and credit him for them.

On Wed, Nov 19 at 11pm,
Sean said —

A friend and I just submitted a version of the board game Hex to the app store tonight. Maybe that’d interest you? :) I wrote up a blog post here: http://blog.bigzaphod.org/2008/11/20/bringing-hexy-back/

On Wed, Nov 19 at 11pm,
Jeremie Miller said —

My good friend Sean just released Hexy, I think you’ll like :)

On Thu, Nov 20 at 12am,
Jens Alfke said —

A good Hex game does sound up my alley. It’s a famous game but I’ve actually never played it, somehow.

On Thu, Nov 27 at 8pm,
Kontra said —

Speaking of board-game design, I bemoaned the loss of aesthetics in more recent productions, with examples from 16th century on here:

Daily question: Is it just a game?

On Thu, Nov 27 at 11pm,
Jens Alfke said —

Kontra: Well yes, the lack of aesthetics in recent Hasbro games, as in your example, is pretty clear. Looking to Hasbro for design sense (visual or gameplay) is like looking to Dress Barn for evening gowns or to MTV for cutting-edge music. ;-)

We’re actually lucky enough to be in the middle of an explosion of creativity and quality in board gaming, but to find it you have to look a bit farther afield; the website BoardGameGeek is a great place to start.

On Thu, Nov 27 at 11pm,
Kontra said —

Looking to Hasbro for design sense (visual or gameplay) is like looking to Dress Barn for evening gowns or to MTV for cutting-edge music. ;-)

Point taken, as I commented in my blog. However, the upcoming First Lady says it’s OK to go with JCrew, we don’t need $150K haute couture to look fabulous. :-)

On Fri, Nov 28 at 9am,
alcolfpab said —

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How relating to we try something a piquant deprecating this later ?

perchance something like this ?

http://www.50isadick.com

On Sat, Nov 29 at 5pm,
Greg said —

You’re right on about the AI thing. I implemented the AI for Hexy, which was definitely a bit of a chore… it’s pretty similar to Go in terms of the difficulty of computing a good solution (aka really, really hard). There’s been some cool research done on playing Hex well, but you have to implement it - and it’s pretty complicated stuff. It would have been much easier to adapt the code from Six (for KDE, which is one of the best Hex bots out there), but that’s GPLed and we couldn’t get in touch with the author.

It’s a valid point about how you could feasibly charge for OSS stuff on the iPhone, just because only people who’ve paid their $100 for a dev certificate can actually get programs on the phone. But it’s still a bit dicey, trying to charge for something you released the source for, and Hexy cost us a fair bit of money and time that we’d like to recoup. So instead you’re stuck with the OK-but-not-great AI that I was able to get working. Maybe in future versions that’ll improve. :-)

On Sat, Nov 29 at 5pm,
Jens Alfke said —

Greg — I’m actually happy that I’m able to sometimes win at Hexy! It’s a great confidence-booster, since I’m new at Hex. I find that getting crushed by the AI the first few times I play a game (as happens with Go apps) tends to keep me from wanting to play more. By comparison, my 3rd game against Hexy was epic, as I nearly established a connection, only to have the AI block me and threaten its own, until I slowly twisted past its guard and won.

Now all you have to do is add improvements to the AI over time, so as I get better the game will get better along with me ;-)

On Mon, Dec 1 at 12pm,
Sean said —

Jens - Thanks for the kind words about Hexy! Greg and I put a lot of time and effort into it, and it’s cool to see people liking it. :) I understand you are an ex-Apple dude - I was wondering if maybe you’d know how Apple decides when an app is “new” and should show up, say, on the front page of the Games section… :p

On Mon, Dec 1 at 2pm,
eoin said —

In thinking of a game for the iPhone i was trying to think of something that could be iPhone specific, involving touch or movement etc. One of the ideas I had was a connect four ( or five etc.) type game where you moved a piece and then rotated the iPhone when handing to your opponent - this move is obligatory. Also it could be 3d. However i worked out you didnt need an iphone for this as you could force the rotate in software :-)

Let’s have some different iPhone board games!

Big List Of Abstract Board Games You Should Implement And Sell Me:

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