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Games
Paros
Two pawns, twenty-five stacks. Step, then usually slide one straight through your own square — land on a corner or empty ground and your turn's over instead. First to four wins.
Staqs
Slide stacks across a grid of neutral piles — any distance, straight lines only, merging only onto neutral ground. When neither side can move, tallest stack wins.
Kikori
Plant paired trees or fell one to send the lumberjack in and turn a neighboring tree into a log. Whoever ends with the largest connected grove wins.
Thicket
Draw lines between dots to seal off pockets of ground — no dot ever takes more than three lines, so the territory grows lumpy and wild instead of into a neat grid.
Trivalent
A triangular-lattice enclosure game — every dot has up to six connections instead of four. Lone triangles can't be claimed alone, and Bot B plays with a komi bonus to even the odds. Watch two bots duel, or take a seat yourself.
Avalanche
Move a pawn like a queen, then send a neutral piece falling south to match its distance exactly. Surround an opponent's pawn on all sides and it's captured — outlast them or run them out of moves.
Jumpers
Jumping spiders on a diamond grid. Every turn is a capture or a hop-and-spawn — hop over your own to advance, leap over theirs to take them, and never let your spiders get stranded apart.
Ricochet
An asymmetric hunt. The Shooter names which Mover must move, the Movers decide where it goes, then the Shooter fires from that square — straight on, or bent once off a spent shot.
Amida
A Ghost Leg crossing race. The top piece of a stack flies as far as the stack is tall, bridges force it across lanes, and landing on an enemy stack takes it over. First to get six pieces across wins.
Huddle Up!
Penguins on a melting floe. A lone penguin hops 1 to 3 spaces and the ice it leaves cracks away — split the floe and the smaller piece sinks with everyone on it.
Paros
By Rey Alicea, 2026. Step your pawn onto any adjacent square. Land on empty ground or on a corner and your turn ends right there — otherwise, slide a neighboring stack through your own square to whatever's directly opposite, and if a merge or a mid-size relocation is on the table you have to take one. Build a stack to height four or higher and you win on the spot.
Full rules
Objective. Build a stack four pieces high or higher.
Setup. 25 neutral pieces fill a 5×5 grid, one per cell. Starting with Blue, players take turns placing their pawn on any stack that doesn't already have a pawn on it.
Each turn, in order (Blue moves first):
1. Move. Step your pawn one square, orthogonally or diagonally, onto any adjacent square — empty or not. You just can't land on the other pawn.
2. Slide. If you stepped onto empty ground — or onto a corner square, regardless of what's stacked there — your turn ends here. Otherwise, pick one of the stacks touching your pawn (up to eight, diagonals included — empty squares don't count) and slide it through your pawn's square to whatever's directly opposite: land on a stack and yours merges onto it, or land on empty ground and you may relocate there only if some other stack touches it orthogonally. Either way, you can never land back on the square you just stepped off of.
Height rule. A stack of height 1 may only merge, never relocate. A stack of height 2 or 3 may do either, your choice. If a merge or a height-2/3 relocation is available anywhere, you must play one of them — only when neither exists does your turn end after the move alone.
No repeats. A move is illegal if it would recreate any position that's already occurred in the game. If you have no legal move at all, the game ends in a draw.
End game. The instant a stack reaches height 4 or more, whoever moved it wins.
Staqs
By Rey Alicea. Slide stacks across a 5×5 board of neutral piles. You may pass over stacks of any color, but you can only land on — and merge onto — a stack whose top piece is neutral; you can never capture or land on a colored stack. When neither side can move, whoever holds the tallest stack wins.
Full rules
Setup. Every cell starts with a single neutral piece. Blue and White alternate placing one piece each on top of a neutral pile — Blue, White, Blue, White, four pieces each. After placement, a coin flip decides who actually moves first; placement order doesn't determine turn order.
Move. On your turn, slide one of your stacks (a stack whose top piece is your color) orthogonally, any distance, in a straight line. The path must stay on occupied squares the whole way — a single empty square blocks the slide entirely, so you can pass over stacks of any color but must stop on a cell with a neutral top. Landing merges your whole stack onto it. The square you leave becomes empty.
Passing. If you have no legal move, you pass. The game ends the instant both players pass in a row.
Winner. Compare tallest stack; if tied, whoever has more stacks at that height; if still tied, repeat the comparison at the next height down; a complete tie goes to whoever moved last.
Kikori
By Rey Alicea, 2017. Plant trees in pairs, or send the lumberjack in to fell one of your own and turn a neighboring opponent tree into a dead log. End the game with the largest connected grove of your color, counting orthogonally and diagonally.
Full rules
Objective. End the game with the largest connected group of your tree color — orthogonal and diagonal neighbors both count.
Plant Trees. Place two of your tree tiles on empty spaces adjacent to each other. The very first move of the game plants only one tree.
Fell a Tree. Place one tree tile, then move the lumberjack to an empty space adjacent to that new tile and adjacent to an opponent tree, then flip that adjacent opponent tree into a dead log — removed from scoring, but the space stays occupied.
Game ends when the player to move has no legal Plant or Fell action.
Tiebreak. If both players' largest groves are the same size, compare each side's next-largest grove, then the next, and so on until one side is bigger. If every grove matches exactly, the last player able to move wins.
Thicket
By Rey Alicea. Enclose the wild, claim the ground. Draw a line between two adjacent dots on your turn; seal off a pocket of empty cells and you claim it — initials and all — then go again. No dot ever takes more than three lines, which keeps the board from settling into a neat grid.
Full rules
Goal. Claim more territory than the bot. Score is the number of unit cells you've claimed, plus 1 point for every separate region you claim.
Your turn. Click a gap between two adjacent dots to draw a line there.
Claiming. If your line fully seals off a pocket of empty cells, you claim it and go again immediately. Keep going as long as you keep sealing pockets.
The three-line limit. No dot may ever have more than three lines touching it — this keeps the board from turning into a neat grid, forcing lumpier, wilder territory.
Game end. When no legal line remains anywhere, the game ends and the higher total score wins.
Trivalent
By Rey Alicea. An enclosure game on a triangular lattice — every dot has up to six connections instead of four, since each square cell carries one fixed diagonal. Seal off a pocket and it becomes an islet worth its own boundary dots minus 3 — but a lone triangle's boundary only ever touches 3 dots, so it can never be claimed by itself. Bot B carries a +7 komi bonus to even out the first-mover advantage.
Full rules
Board. A grid of dots where every interior dot connects to up to 6 neighbors — the usual 4 orthogonal directions, plus one fixed diagonal per adjacent cell. Each square cell has exactly one diagonal position, not a choice of two.
Objective. Score more points than your opponent.
Turns. Draw one line per turn — any undrawn orthogonal edge, or a cell's diagonal while that cell is still whole and unclaimed. No dot may ever have more than 3 lines touching it, and you can't draw a line where both cells it would separate are already claimed.
Claiming. If your line fully seals off a pocket of empty space, it only becomes a claimed islet if its boundary touches at least 4 distinct dots — a single triangle's boundary only ever touches 3, so a lone triangle can never be claimed alone. A move that would seal off a pocket below that threshold simply isn't legal. Claiming an islet grants another turn immediately; keep going as long as each new line claims something.
Scoring. Each claimed islet is worth the number of distinct dots on its own boundary, minus 3 points. This generally favors a few larger islets over many small ones, though a cut that exposes several new boundary dots can offset — or beat — the cost of splitting.
Game end. The game ends when no legal line remains. Higher total score wins. Expect a meaningful share of the board to stay unclaimed — that's normal.
Komi. The first player (A) has a measured advantage on this board, so Bot B's final score gets a fixed +7 bonus before totals are compared.
Avalanche
By Rey Alicea. Move a pawn like a queen, any distance in any direction. Then send a neutral piece falling south exactly as far as your pawn just traveled. Surround a pawn on all eight sides and it's captured outright. Pieces only ever enter from the top and drift down — get boxed in and you're out.
Full rules
Setup. Each side's pawns are scattered randomly across the lower board. The top two rows start filled with neutral pieces, with more waiting in a draw pool to enter from the top as the game goes on.
Your turn. Move one of your own pawns like a chess queen — any distance, any direction, through empty squares. Then you must send a neutral piece south, exactly as many squares as your pawn just moved. Any neutral piece on the board is fair game, as long as it has a clear run of that exact length.
Refilling. Whenever the neutral piece you send was sitting in the very top row, that row immediately gets refilled from the draw pool — as long as it lasts, more pieces keep entering from the top.
Capturing. A pawn is captured and removed from the board the moment it has zero open squares among its 8 neighbors — fully surrounded, it's taken off entirely rather than left stuck in place.
Game end. If you lose all your pawns, or simply can't make a legal pawn-move-plus-matching-piece move on your turn, you lose.
Jumpers
By Rey Alicea. Jumping spiders on a grid of points turned on its corner like a diamond. Every turn is a capture or a hop-and-spawn: leap an enemy spider to take it, or hop over one of your own and drop a new spider from your reserve where you land. If you ever can't do either, you lose.
Full rules
Board. A grid of points turned on its corner like a diamond. The pieces (jumping spiders, called stones below) sit on the points and move only along the lines.
Setup. Player 1 fills the bottom corner (a1, b1, a2, b2); Player 2 fills the top corner (the mirror image). Each player keeps a private reserve beside the board: the player who moves first gets 12 stones and the player who moves second gets 13, to balance the first-move edge.
Every turn is a capture or a hop-and-spawn.
1. Capture. Jump one of your stones along a line over an adjacent enemy stone onto the empty point beyond; the enemy stone is removed for good. If any capture is available you must make one, and keep capturing with that stone while you can — even onto a point it already passed through this turn. No spawn on a capturing turn.
2. Hop and spawn. With no capture, jump one of your stones over an adjacent stone of your own. You may keep hopping, but a hop can't land on a point the stone already visited this turn. If a capture opens up mid-chain it takes over. When you stop, place a stone from your reserve on an empty point next to where you landed (along a line).
Losing. At the start of your turn, if you can't capture and can't hop-then-spawn, you lose — either your stones are isolated from each other, or your reserve is empty and there's nothing to capture.
Edges. No wraparound. Rounds. Player 1 starts odd rounds, Player 2 even rounds; play an even number of rounds.
Ricochet
By Rey Alicea. An asymmetric hunt game. The Shooter names which Mover must move; the Movers' player decides where it goes; then the Shooter fires from that square, capturing on a clear line or a single diagonal bend off a spent shot. Each missed shot costs one of the Shooter's tokens; a capture leaves the token unspent. The Shooter wins by reaching the capture target; the Movers win if the Shooter runs out of tokens or every surviving Mover is boxed in.
Full rules
Sides. One player controls the Movers (P1); the other is the Shooter (P2). The Movers start scattered on a 7×7 board so that no two share a row, column, or diagonal. The Shooter starts with a supply of tokens — 20 is standard.
1. Name a Mover. Each round, the Shooter names one surviving Mover that must move. The Shooter can't name the same Mover two rounds in a row, unless it's the only one that can move.
2. Move it. The Movers' player moves that Mover like a chess queen — any distance in any of the 8 directions, through empty squares. Other Movers and spent shots block the way.
3. Fire. The Shooter then fires from the Mover's new square, straight along any of the 8 directions. The first Mover the shot reaches is captured. If a spent shot sits in the way first, the shot may bend once off that spot onto any of its 4 diagonals and capture the first Mover it reaches from there. A capture costs the Shooter nothing — the token goes unspent.
Missing. Firing is mandatory. If the Shooter doesn't capture, the shot lands on an empty square along one of the lines from the firing square and stays there for good as a spent shot — a permanent blocker — and costs one token.
Winning. The Shooter wins on reaching the capture target (for example, 3 captures with 4 Movers). The Movers win if the Shooter has to miss with no tokens left, or if every surviving Mover is boxed in with no legal move.
Amida
By Rey Alicea. A crossing race built on Ghost Leg (Amidakuji). Only the top piece of a stack moves, and it flies as far as the stack is tall. Every bridge it meets forces it across a lane, and landing on an enemy stack covers it and takes it over.
Full rules
Goal. Black starts on row 1 and moves up the ladder; White starts on the far home row and moves the other way. The first player to get 6 of their 8 pieces off the far end wins (7 of 10 on the long board).
Setup. Each player has a stack of 2 on every lane of their home row. Players take turns placing the bridges, Black first. Two bridges may never share an endpoint (joined bridges would leave a piece arriving at the shared point with two ways to cross), and home rows never have bridges. Black moves first.
Moving. Choose a stack whose top piece is yours and move only that top piece, exactly as many steps as the stack is tall, counting both colors. A lone piece moves 1 step. Whenever the piece steps onto a bridge endpoint, it must cross to the other lane at once. Crossing is free. Pieces pass over other pieces; only the landing point matters.
Covering. A piece may land on any stack and goes on top. Whoever owns the top piece controls the stack. Covered pieces are frozen until everything above them has left. Nothing is ever captured.
Shifting bridges. Instead of moving, you may slide one bridge one row up or down, or one gap sideways. You cannot shift the bridge your opponent just shifted, and you cannot shift on two turns in a row.
Exiting. The exit is one step past the far home row. A piece exits when its move reaches or passes it.
Passing. If you have no legal action, you pass. This happens when every one of your pieces is covered and you shifted a bridge last turn (or no shift is legal). Your opponent always has a move in that case, so the game never stalls.
Huddle Up!
By Rey Alicea. Penguins on a melting floe. A lone penguin hops 1 to 3 spaces, and the ice it leaves cracks away; if the floe splits, the smaller piece sinks with everyone on it.
Full rules
Setup. The board is a hex floe with a hole in the center. All other spaces are filled, one penguin each, half Black and half White: 18 each on the standard board, 30 each on the large one. Either deal them at random or take turns placing them (Black first) on any empty space. Black moves first.
On your turn.
- Move one of your penguins that stands alone on its space. Penguins in a huddle (2 or 3 on a space) never move again.
- Move 1, 2, or 3 spaces in a straight line in any of the 6 directions. Every space you cross and the space you land on must hold penguins. You can never cross an empty space or the center hole.
- The space you leave cracks away and stays empty for the rest of the game.
- If you can move, you must. If none of your penguins can move, you pass.
Landing.
- On 1 penguin (either color): join it to make a huddle of 2.
- On 2 penguins where at least one is yours: if the other is an opponent's, it is bumped off the ice. Otherwise you join to make a huddle of 3.
- You can't land on 2 opponent penguins or on a full huddle of 3.
Splitting the floe. After every move, if the ice has broken into separate pieces, keep the piece with the most penguins and sink the rest, both colors. If pieces tie, keep the one holding the penguin that just moved; if it's in none of them, keep the one with more of the mover's penguins.
End and scoring. The game ends when both players pass in a row. Each space held by one color scores 1 point per penguin on it (1, 2, or 3). A mixed pair of 1 Black and 1 White scores 0. Most points wins; ties go to Black.