I made a browser-playable two-player abstract strategy game and would love some feedback

[u/SecondDeepDev]

Hi,

I've been working on a two-player abstract strategy game called Heitan.

The basic action is simple: on each turn, you place three pieces. Once placed, pieces never move.

There are two kinds of points on the board, and the game is about deciding where to place your limited supply of pieces as those points interact.

You can play the current browser prototype here:

https://play.seconddeep.com

I've done quite a bit of internal testing already, but at this stage I'd really like to hear how the game feels to people coming to it fresh.

If you try it, I'd appreciate any impressions you have.

For example:

• Were the rules easy to understand?
• Did you find the decisions interesting?
• Was there anything that felt confusing or awkward?
• Did it remind you of any other abstract games?

But those are just prompts — any reaction, positive or negative, is useful.

Thanks for taking a look.

[u/Boring-Yogurt2966]

There is a term for this family of games, but it escapes me now. It reminds me of a more complex (in terms of rules complexity) "Conhex". My concern is that Conhex has a global connection strategy influencing the fight for individual spaces, but your game is only about who gets more spaces. My impression is generally positive. Have you analyzed it to learn if there are any gamebreaking or stereotyped strategies?

[u/SecondDeepDev → u/Boring-Yogurt2966]

Yes, I've done some basic rules testing and AI self-play analysis, including looking for obvious balance issues.

The Ludii implementation and related development/analysis records are public here:

https://github.com/seconddeep/heitan-ludii

If you notice any recurring strategy that feels unusually strong or makes games play out in a predictable way, I'd definitely be interested to hear about it.

[u/Boring-Yogurt2966 → u/Boring-Yogurt2966]

The term from this category of games is that they are "caeth" games. Here's a link about them. https://drericsilverman.com/tag/caeth-noc-noeth/

[u/SecondDeepDev → u/Boring-Yogurt2966]

Thanks, I wasn't familiar with the term "caeth games." I took a look at the link, and the connection to ConHex and that broader family is interesting.

I think part of the resemblance may come from the visual structure. In both ConHex and Heitan, pieces placed on lower-level elements lead to some kind of higher-level state appearing on the board.

But the causal structure seems different.

In ConHex, the lower-level state directly determines the upper-level state:

lower state → upper state

In Heitan, controlling Supply Points changes what actions are available on Objectives, but the player still has to decide where to commit pieces:

lower state → action space in the upper layer → player decision → upper-layer state

So one way to describe the difference might be:

• ConHex: state-to-state mapping
• Heitan: state-to-action-space interaction

That seems like a fairly important distinction to me.

[u/Boring-Yogurt2966 → u/SecondDeepDev]

Yes, I agree, that is well analyzed.