No mean feat to create a dozen abstracts! Do you think it’s still feasible to get abstracts published in 2022? Or has the market moved on?

@@AdaminWales As you observed, abstracts are a luxury market within a luxury market. Since the rules are so easy to share, what you're selling is either premium, hard-to-fabricate materials (ie Gigamic, Shobu) or other content, usually cards (ie Onitama, Santorini). I've seen a few add "random draw" into the mix for some added spice but they don't seem to have legs after their initial debut (ie The Duke, War Chest).

I can easily imagine abstract strategies are the games which an idea just suddenly comes to you by accident eureka like or massively mangling existing games in a bizarre fashion just to see what happens. IMO I think they are super hard to create

I haven’t come across this one. It sounds fun!

@@AdaminWales I really like Push Fight. Recommend that one. The guy who designed it is selling it online from his own site. It it possible to mix pieces and boards. He sends you an email about it when you order.

@@diamondmeeple Supposedly it’s also (like other Sumo style push games) meant to simulate martial arts in a very abstract way…in this case, the grappling of Jiu Jitsu!

Yes, I think they have a different audience to other types of games - and people seem to enjoy mastering one or two titles rather than dipping into a large selection (as I like to do!)

I haven’t heard of any of these! But I’m always ready to try new abstracts :)

Ah great! Post a link when it’s released so I can check it out :)

I just purchased Urbino... the others a proving more difficult to acquire.

Thanks - glad you enjoyed it :) For me Patchwork is an extension of the genre, rather than a clear-cut example. You’re right that it’s 100% strategy, zero luck, and essentially themeless. But it has a significantly more complex ruleset than most combinatorial games. Patchwork feels very inspired by modern Euro games, with its button economy & income events, the out of sync turn sequence (time track) and end game scoring. For me it’s not pure enough (or that horrible word “elegant” enough) to fit the standard mould. In the video I compare it to Onitama with its changing setup between games, and drafting mechanism which sits outside of the core game. Both games feel “modern”. This is a really positive observation - not a criticism at all - but it makes them feel like something “different” to the classic genre. I suppose in my head I might ask: could this game be manufactured from wood and left on a tabletop as an attractive object? Onitama has those additional cards - and Patchwork has pieces all over the place. It’s just too busy to sit alongside Chess, Checkers, Quarto, Hive, Shobu etc. It’s a very subjective take. On objective criteria alone, I can’t disagree with you.

I love YINSH & GIPF, but haven’t had a chance to play Tak yet. I’d like to after researching it for this video.

Haha. Thanks for watching Jamie. Glad you're enjoying the videos.

Thanks for watching :)

Great - good luck with it! Hope I get to try it out sometime.

Já criei umas 20 variantes de xadrez. Algumas das primeiras eu já encontrei por aí, criadas por outras pessoas, de tão simples que é a ideia. Mas de outras criações minhas mais maduras, e posteriores, eu gosto muito. Nunca lancei nenhuma. Mas criar variantes de xadrez é fácil. Ao menos para mim. Agora, jogo abstrato eu não sei nem por onde começar. Parece que tudo já foi inventado nessa área. É outra fantasia minha. Um dia criar meu próprio jogo abstrato. Mas acho esse um objetivo bem mais difícil.

It’s mentioned a couple of times, but only briefly. I wanted to focus primarily on the new abstract strategy games which are often overlooked rather than traditional classics which are well known and understood. Sorry to disappoint! :)

Yes, you’re right that Santorini deserved a mention. I don’t have a copy of it, so that’s the main reason I didn’t cover it - but there were others which I don’t own which still got mentioned. It was a bit of an oversight because Santorini is certainly one of the most popular abstracts out there - and deserves a mention for its presentation alone!

@@AdaminWales Santorini and Battle Sheep are both interesting examples to me of abstract games that fared better upon rerelease with a theme… mostly because the presentation and components were so great, while the gameplay hadn’t changed!

Sorry for slow reply Edmund - busy week! When I started designing games I didn’t think about business at all. My games Pikoko and Thrown were created without any concern for commercial success. I’m glad they exist, but they’re very niche products. I’m sure I’d still be making little experiments like these. In fact, I do still make experiments like these… I probably just let them go before they ever make it in front of a publisher these days. Big Bazar and Doodle Rush were both made with a commercial intent. Doodle Rush was more successful in that regard. I really enjoy thinking about product design, not just game mechanisms - so it doesn’t feel like I’m losing anything to design in this way. Still feels totally creative and satisfying to me :)

Thanks Annaxel - no, I didn’t leave reducing boards out on purpose. I just hadn’t really played a game like that!

Thanks - sorry I missed that!

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design by Shalev & Engelstein is the definitive text at this point. It’s a massive encyclopaedia of mechanisms.

@@AdaminWales thanks for the quick reply!

TZAAR and ZERTZ are the only two of the GIPF project which I haven’t played. I’m sure I’d love them. YINSH is my favourite of the ones I’ve played.

@@AdaminWales TZAAR got four ways to win. It is like being on a battlefield. Some describe it as a "battle royal" feeling. It takes some matches until the players understand it is more to the game than one single big stack chasing the opponent's.

I go back and forth on which I love more TZAAR or DVONN

I’m sure this is a very effective way of creating a strong abstract game - and essential for blanching different powers. That said, for a simple system like Connect 4 or OK Play, I’m not sure a computer programme, or even much knowledge of mathematics, would be necessary. I wonder how many of the games demonstrated in this video did use that approach?

Other backgrounds might be surprisingly powerful too, for example Nick Bentley learned the idea of perceptual binding from his neuroscience background, which inspired him to design Bug. Medo and Blooms might also be inspired by it to some degree

don't majority of euro/war/abstract games today start with computer modeling formulas, just so the matematics work from the start

@@deepdivemusicreactions I think you’d be surprised. Some do. But many designers work on instinct - and balance their games through extensive play testing and observation rather than computer modelling. It’s as much art as science.

@@AdaminWales I suppose Mark Steere is one of those who use that approach?

It’s generally called a “dominant strategy”. In the abstract strategy genre, some games are described as “solved” meaning that if both players play optimally, the outcome will be predictable, often ending in a draw. Tic Tac Toe is an example of a solved game.

@@AdaminWales oh, ok. Thanks, did you know pentago is also like that

Thanks for the feedback. I try to lay out the scope of each of my videos in the first minute or so, so that people know what they’re getting into. Sorry it didn’t answer some of your questions!

@@AdaminWales what a quick response, thanks! No prob, the video was still entertaining! BTW Do you have any insight on the process of fine tuning the details of the game and knowing which ones are best? Because I keep thinking to myself "what if a 6x10 board is worse than an 8x12 in the end" or "what if there's a fatal flaw I haven't seen yet" and all that stuff haha

@@artemaniaco293 I think most of that stuff comes out in playtesting. There’s no formula for it. There are infinite possibilities for what a game can be. So really, it’s a case of trying different board sizes and configurations and seeing what generates the best experience and feedback. I have other videos on playtesting on my channel (along with many other aspects of design) if you fancy checking them out :)

When making these videos I’m somewhat constrained by the games which I have available to me (to demonstrate). This video in particular was quite an expensive one to make because I bought several of the games to show them in the video. Inevitably that meant some great games were left out. But you’re right, Shogi would have been worth a mention - in the “Capture X” category, but probably more interestingly in the “Special Abilities” section because of its interesting system of upgrading (“promoting”) pieces during the game.

@@AdaminWales I also once saw an interesting variant on Chess called Qwik Chess. In that, you play on a 5x7 board, each player only has 1 of each unit except pawns, which they now only have 5 of (meaning each player is locked to 1 tile color of bishop, opposite tile colors). Also in chess, you can promote a pawn that gets to the other side into anything you want, but a vast majority of people only ever bother to promote to queen. Qwik chess gives no option, automatically queen. Also, I'm not sure Castling or En Peasant are valid rules in Qwik chess. I heard of a variant of chess where first player moves once, then 2nd player moves twice, then first player moves thrice, and so on, getting to make more and more moves in a single turn with each passing turn. I have no idea how that version of chess works. Is Check still a thing? Is the rule that kings can't make moves that'd put them in danger still in effect if they are just able to make another move to immediately get out of danger again anyway? Rule variants on such strategy games might be a good subject for another video.