game ideas

A wraparound 1D board can be thought of as a circle. It can be thought of as a flat circle or something like the loop of a roller coaster. It's all the same. To go east is just another way to go west. Or better yet: to go forwards is to end up behind yourself.

In a 1d game, pieces should be differentiated as to whether they can go only forwards or both forwards and backwards. This will make the bi-directional pieces more dangerous and more exciting. For example, in Chess it is the Queen that sells the game. The Queen is beautifully infinite. And yet the Knight exists as the shadow of the Queen. The Knight moves only to that close range space that the Queen does not. So it's only a Knight that can threaten a Queen without being threatened by that Queen.

In Chess, the Bishop and the Rook are both different halves of the Queen. The Rook is judged more valuable, as the Bishop is confined to one color. Of course the Queen is actually therefore a double bishop, as its rook move allows it to change the color of its "inner Bishop."

In Chess, the Pawn is also a combination of the Rook and the Bishop, albeit in a reduced form. The Pawn is the only directionalized piece in Chess. It moves forward like a Rook, and captures diagonally like a Bishop, but only forward and only a single space, excepting its first move, of course, which was invented to speed the game up. Note that it is the Pawn and only the Pawn that can become a Queen. A pawn on the 7th, if it can safely claim the 8th, is better than a Rook, allowing of course for exceptional situations.

A brief tour of the Zweidorff family of games:

First there was Omni Directional Stress, which was a mix of Chess, Shogi, and Stratego. This game still featured directionalized pawns, but was otherwise more omnidirectional than Chess, as it allowed wraparound. Wraparound makes the board unbounded but finite in its number of locations. But Mr. Zweidorff was soon distracted by the intense directionality of Shogi, and thus derailed from the Stress theme, which was finished enough already, and tackled what would soon be yclept Particle Joust.

At about this same time, the strange and wonderful concept of fusion and fission crept in. Pieces could combine to form new pieces. Zweidorff wanted the promotion factor of Shogi, but struggled with how best to integrate this. He was ambivalent about piece drops. First he thought that a player could merely spend a turn and split a piece perhaps into 3 constituent atoms. But this wasn't simple, as a piece would require adjacent empty spaces for this. And it seemed to break the flow of pure movement. At some point it just clicked. All morphs were also moves. Fusion of the result of a friendly capturing a friendly, which is best thought of as a stacking. Fission was the result of the unstacking, or the moving a piece from the stack to a space within its traditional movement range. For convenience, Zweidorff allowed the pawns to de-stack or fission sideways, although they normally move only forward. This served to make his two second level pieces more interchangable, and more generally flexible. But it was a concession of consistency. Still, how else could pawns form defenders on the first rank? The rank that had at all costs to be defended?

To illustrate the morphology of his game, he considered a starting state of 27 pawns, the atoms at the root of all the pieces. Each player would take his first turns to fuse his pawns into a desired army, pseudo-continuously with an opponent doing the same. A test run of this displayed its limitations. It wasn't exciting to open a game so slowly. A better idea seemed to be starting the game off with no pawns at all, but at the least with all second tier pieces. These at least could fuse into Lances and Stones. Or into the O piece (third tier) which fused with itself to become any fourth tier piece.

Particle Joust was morphological, which was grand, and pseudo-omnidirectional. It was pseudo to the degree that it allowed sidereal movement. Certain pieces could potentially never advance. True, they could not move backward, but they could also avoid advancement. This was fine for a game that rewarded aggression, whose goal was a safe landing on the farthest rank, but it was still a concession. To maximize the poetry of the "directional theme," Mr. Zweidorff finally abolished sidereal movement. This was the birth of Interpenetration.

Interpenetration was also related to A Vision by Yeats, and to the Star of David, as well as perhaps to Plato, and philosophy and mysticism in general. It was also a hermaphroditic alchemical metaphor. The Royal Hermaphrodite. The Tetractys of Pythagoras, as "10" is the juxtaposition of penis and vagina, or yang and yin, etc.

But all this was hardly necessary to enjoy the game as a game. Zweidorff was torn between making Interpenetration a wraparound game or a final rank game, or even a flag-king-based Stratego-Chess game. If he allowed a wraparound, the game could be conceived of as two rivers of pieces running through one another in opposite directions. Just as good, it could be thought of as Alternating Current, the type of electricity that powers our daily lives.

And because movement is turned based rather than continuous, alternating current is the most accurate analogy. Interpenetration was still morphological, as this morph-element was too exciting to abandon.

When Zweidorff eliminated sidereal movement from Particle Joust, and yet kept his already developed pieces, he was of course required to edit these same pieces. The M, which is was completely sideways piece, was simply abolished. The W was now no different than the O. He thought the V could be re-instated. It was now the I and the V that were the basic pieces. And the W was the sum of these, being both visually and dynamically their sum. The O, devoid of its sideways movement, was exactly the same as the W. So the O would now take the role of the new W-style Theta. The O was a W that moved twice, possibly changing directions. He still wasn't sure if he should allow it to capture twice.

The L-jumping pieces did not need changing, but only gain relative power as other pieces lost some mobility.

The Spirit piece lost significant power, but such is life. On the other hand, a lack of sideways movement might make pieces in general more vulnerable to the Spirit. And it was possible to allow the Spirit a W move thru empty space.

The Mirror piece was the same, really, although it mirror only forward moves, rather than forward and/or sideways moves. The Kerf, or the Nonlinear, or call it what you will, perhaps gained power. As adjacent pieces were perhaps more likely, blockages more expected.

A player could win Interpenetration by damning up his opponents movement. If an opponent cannot move, he loses. It's that simple. Move or die. Like a shark. Interpenetration is Shark Joust.

If he allowed a wraparound in the forward/backward dimension, this would require a teleport from the far end of the board to the near end. Perhaps from the final to the first rank. This would make the edge ranks quite important, as the enemy cannot capture a player's pieces on the player's 7th (for example) or the enemies 1st. This is because no pieces can move sideways. And the Red player's teleport home is simultaneously the home rank of the Black pieces. So possession of these squares becomes important. A place ripe for ambush, mergers, the staging of an offense. And this leaves the middle area of the board as a neutral zone, where pieces on both sides are at their most vulnerable.

This sort of Interpenetration could be played either to annihilation or the capture of the King-piece, provided for the occasion. Another possibility was to have one and only one static piece, a piece that would serve as the Flag serves in Stratego. Both defenders and attackers of this Flag could only defend or attack it in passing. Yes, certain pieces can not-move, of course, of other pieces are moved instead, and this is the crux of the drama. To force moves becomes important in Interpenetration. And the Non piece, which functions as does a Blockade in Parcheesi, is possibly essential. The Non is created by the Merger of On pieces. On plus On equals Non. 1 + 1 = 0.

When Zweidorff saw the movement patterns of the Gold and the Silver in Shogi, he thought of fighting fish. They were much better pieces forward than they were backward. So he stripped the backward moves from these fighting fish, and that was Particle Joust. But then he saw that the sideways moves were still a compromise, and stripped these away also. This was Interpenetration, and is also, excepting Kings, Checkers.

A Note On Influences:

From Chess, the obvious omnidirectional form of varied pieces, and the notion of a King to be captured. Chess + Stratego = Stress.

From Chess, the omnidirectionality. From Stratego, the creative choice as to which pieces to begin the game with.

Then there was Drop Stress or Morph Stress (or just Morff). This was an introduction of the promotion as well as the drop element of Shogi, and yet also a new element. The morph element, if allowed without limits both for fusion and fission, makes all pieces the organs of a single piece. The king is not a piece on the board but all pieces on the board that the player controls. The player exists as a system of pieces, and this system can take different forms. But we've explored this already.

As our hero was editing Stress/Particle Joust pieces for Interpenetration, he was struck by the thought of a 3 dimensional board. Pieces would still move only forward, but also up or down (necessarily diagonally). This was a mind bend, as it gave the Theta piece some crazy potency. Well, it was only a step to 4 dimensions, or 11. But these would not be playable, unless....

Unless the game was mostly 2 dimensional with limited squares that were 3 or 4 dimensional. This was easily achieved by the limited junction of the 2 different 2 dimensional zones at a 4 dimensional junction. Or 7 two-dimensional zones could be junctioned for 14 dimensions, and so on. Or...

And then it hit him. Why not go "down" to One Dimension. He had read that nice book Flatland, and here he was composing Chess for Lineland, which as any good reader knows its a place visited by A Square in that same book.

He now had to edit his precious pieces once again. Backwards movement was already gone long since. Sideways movement had been removed after. All that was left was diagonal movement. Just as the elimination of sideways movement had make the W equivalent to the O, so did the elimination of the diagonal movement make the I equivalent to the W. Nice!

But what could one do with the L-jumpers? It was simple really. They now just jumped straight head, which became quite important in a monodimensional game. The L-jumpers were now just I-jumpers.

The Mirror was still the mirror, although less threatened. The Killer piece was still the killer piece, except he now had to be allowed to move in a linear fashion. He became purely about cost now, and not at all about shape, excepting the necessary juxtaposition of his targets both friendly and opposed.
The positron, as a jumper, was still quite feasible, but not as exciting perhaps. So maybe one could allow the positron to alternate between eating a friend and an enemy. This would give it its glory back. It could still make amazing moves, if the pieces were aligned right.

The Spirit was perhaps more glorious in one dimension, as the problem of being in one's own way reaches a maximum here. The Spirit likes pieces in its way, for pieces are its way. The Spirit was born for monodimensionality.

The Spirit, the Non, the Positron, the Slayer, the On...what else?

The Theta is still possible, and especially if one allows it to move both forwards and backwards. (Yes, Interpenetration can now justify backward movement, as long as the One Dimension is circular. To go forwards is also to go backwards. But for poetic reasons, most pieces should still be strongly faced, directional, etc. This gives the Theta its charm.) So the Theta can move and capture twice. Making it still quite dangerous at close range, and dangerous to "protected" pieces and the pieces that "protect" them. For the Theta scoops them both up.

We cannot forget the Lance or the Rook or the Queen. For in One Dimension, the Rook is the Bishop is the Queen. Infinite movement is infinite movement. The only possible distinction is whether or not the piece is faced, or bidirectional. It might be nice to have both. The two-faced piece would be like the Double Delta, something quite expensive. This would be the Queen. The other unidirectional piece would serve as the Lance. Call them what you will. This gives us a respectable set.

A recent idea was the use of only one colored piece in order to represent all others. This could be done by the use of stacking. So a stack would get its movement/identity from nothing but the number of homogenous pieces within its stack. And fission would just be the movement of pieces off the stack.

It occurred to Mr. Zweidorff, that the pieces could unstack according the movement pattern of their associate sub-stack. If 3 pieces were to jump off a stack of 7, then these 3 pieces could indeed jump, assuming that the 3-stack was equivalent to the jumper.

If the Non was a stack of 2, and the Jump was a stack of a 3, then a stack of 5 could fission into a Non and a Jump, by means of its top three pieces jumping (as one Jump piece) off the stack, over the forward adjacent space. This would leave behind two chips, which would instantaneously become the Non. In a One Dimensional game, where pieces are in one another's way, a more flexible merging-system is perhaps desirable. A smart player is master of merging. Merging is movement is attack is defense. Some brilliant moves are made possible. But the merge/promotion system must be perfectly designed. This is the tricky part. We don't want the stacks too high. We want maximum flexibility. Trial and error are perhaps the best method for designing this system.

The board could be a nice circular track. The pieces could be something like checkers, but perhaps not as tall and more interlocking, to allow for easier stacking. Most of each player pieces would be moving in the same direction. A few could move relatively backwards, and therefore take the enemy from behind. Of course two circles could be joined at a 2-dimensional junction space, and this could also be nice. Or there could be 2-junction spaces. This would give us parallel dimensions. The junction spaces would be like the meeting of railroad tracks, or places where pieces could move between dimensions. Pieces on such squares would be more threatening as well as more threatened.

What is the goal? Was ist die Wesen? (guessing on "Wesen"). The goal is to create a platform for competitive creativity. Or in some cases just creativity. Mr. Zweidorff likes the idea of Stress problems being composed and solved by others. Stress pieces are more complicated than those of Chess.

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It's the next day, and our author is high. He has tested some games and found them wanting, probably because he is playing against himself and also it was just too much number-space crunching. It's about the god damned poetry. Perhaps his games will be better for Problem Art than actually playing. But that would not be good. An absurd obsession perhaps. Just like math, it is conceptual art.

The pieces are little machines. Little abstract/conceptual tools that exist as part of a system of tools. A piece has a value in relation to other pieces. Any non contingent value approximations are useful and perhaps even necessary, but also deceptive as to the nature of the game.

We have 3 basic ways in which to make a piece valuable in a move/capture game like chess, etc. We can give it more speed, more turning radius, or some special ability.


The On, the Non, the Son, the Ton, the Con. The One and the Fun and the Done. And the Gone.

The name of the game is On. The name of the basic piece is "On." An On in the heart of the game. But what is an On? Is an On a Pawn?

Should the game be about capture, or just about movement? A nice twist. Perhaps the object is to jam up the opponent. Move or lose. And pieces perhaps could morph but neither capture nor be captured.


Maybe Drop Stress is the way to go. A Stress with drops wherein pieces can only move if they can capture. This puts the emphasis on the drops. This makes dropped pieces more vulnerable to dropping pieces. From there, one could play it 2 ways. Either the captured pieces are used/dropped as one's own, or pieces are gradually annihilated, as in Chess.

A player has 9 or 7 or 17 pieces, and drops his choice of piece into his choice of position. In a game like this, pieces can be dropped where they are most potent, and the lack of starting positions will keep the game fresh. No players will have the same game. As they will choose different pieces. Or they can commit to using the same pieces according to taste.

This reduces or at least changes the number crunching aspect. We like to dream up attacks, not do the drudgework. The drop is surgical.

The drop ties us to Go and Shogi. But in other ways we are dealing with Chess, as this game is omnidirectional. To maximize creative possibilities, and also because a game like this gives neither player a home territory. True, a player may choose to cluster his pieces, but that is according to taste.

This game could hang on the wall like a painting. Magnetic letters could serve as pieces. Both players could view the game comfortably from the same angle. This is a reverse of Interpenetration. Or perhaps its fulfillment. The opponents interpenetrate within a cloud of one another's pieces.