Clear Path társasjáték

Angol leírás

Clear Path is a two-player connection game played on a square grid of any size, initially empty. The top and bottom board edges are colored red. The left and right edges are colored blue. The two players, Red and Blue, take turns placing their own stones onto unoccupied points, at least one stone per turn, starting with Red. Passing is not allowed. You should always have a legal placement or legal series of placements available. Clear Path uses the pie rule.

If you begin your turn by placing on a point which is orthogonally surrounded on 3 or 4 sides by stones and/or edges, you must then immediately place another stone. If this next stone is also placed on a point so surrounded, you must then place yet another stone. And so on. Once you place on a point not so surrounded, your turn is concluded.

At the end of your turn, your opponent must not be completely blocked from connecting his two edges, unless you have formed a winning path of your stones. In other words, there must not be an ODIP connecting your edges unless there is also an OIP connecting your edges. An OIP is an Orthogonally (horizontally and/or vertically) Interconnected Path. An ODIP is an Ortho-diagonally (horizontally, vertically, and/or diagonally) Interconnected Path.

You win if you form an OIP of your stones touching the two opposite edges of your color.

Design notesClear Path is the first OOSCG (Orthogonal Only Square Connection Game) to use the clear path rule to prevent deadlocks (a position from which neither player can win). The notion of a clear path based OOSCG has been around for a long time, but none have been successfully implemented before now. Standard OOSCGs prevent deadlocks by using various means to prevent crosscuts (a 2x2 area with two blue stones diagonally opposite from one another and two red stones diagonally opposite from one another).

The key to Clear Path’s success was the Chain Reaction mechanism, which I borrowed from my earlier design, Flume (2010).