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3 months ago, I did a show HN for a variant of minesweeper ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39232572 ), and now I'd like to share this variant of Checkers.
In case you've never played it, the classic Checkers is a simple board game where 2 players have to capture the others' pawns by jumping over them. You can only move in turn, by 1 tile in diagonal, but you can keep moving if you've just captured. And if your pawns reach the opposite edge of the board, they become kings, which are very powerful as they can move by more than 1 tile.
In this variant, the rules are the exact same, but using an irregular grid opens up new strategies: - some corners will connect more than 4 tiles. They can connect 5 or 6. That creates new diagonals, which gives pawns and kings more potential moves. - some corners will connect less than 4 tiles. This does the opposite of the previous point, as this removes diagonals. This limits your moves in a specific direction, but can also protect you from your opponents. It's the kind of features that can be used both as a defense and as attack.
And the boards are procedurally generated, so you can play unique games each time (or you can re-use the same boards if you like). It is done with my engine Polygonjs ( https://polygonjs.com/ ), and if you're curious about how the grid is built, here is an example scene you can play with: https://polygonjs.com/gui/irregular_quad_relaxation/edit .
The game is not free on Steam/iOS, but the demo has no time limit, it just gives you a handful of boards to play with (when the full games has hundreds, possibly thousands).
I hope that's fun!
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAfUvwuLueI - Demo: https://polyreplay.com/checkerstwist - Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2775510/Checkers_Twist/ - iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/checkers-twist/id6502125558
