Elevator Pitch:
A two-player abstract strategy game where you race to grow a ridge of volcanoes halfway around a planet. What’s unique about this game? Three things:
- Played on a sphere-like shape called a Pentakis Icosidodecahedron. It’s like a 20-sided die, but each triangle face is cut into four triangles. So there are a total of 80 spaces on the board. And the board wraps around in all directions.
- Volcanoes erupt once they get to level five, destroying neighboring-opponent-volcanoes and accelerating neighboring-friendly-volcano growth.
- Two plays per turn with growth phases between turns.
What kind of game is it?
It’s similar to a connection game (like Hex). But one player’s connection doesn’t necessarily block the opponent’s connection, so perhaps it’s more of a race that feels connection-game-ish. But it also has capturing (via volcano eruptions), so that can feel a little Go-ish.
Video Introduction:
How do turns and growth work?
Orange and blue volcanoes alternate placing their volcanoes on the board. But each color gets two turns in a row, with a neutral growth phase in between. (See Turn Clock illustration.) Volcanoes start at level one when they are first played. You can also spend your turn increasing the growth of one of your existing volcanoes.
How do eruptions work?
When volcanoes get to level five, they erupt with the following effects:
- adjacent enemy volcanoes are destroyed (removed)
- adjacent friendly volcanoes advance one level on the growth track (this can trigger more eruptions)
- the level-five-volcano that erupted resets to level one on the growth track
Try the game!
You can download a digital prototype of the game, if you have a computer that runs Windows. There’s an installer (named something like this: Setup-Volcanoes-v0.4.2.exe). Or you can just download the zip (named something like this Volcanoes-v0.4.2.zip), unzip to a folder and run the Volcanoes.exe file in that folder. I recommend playing against these four AIs (ordered from strongest to weakest):
- Parallel MCTS Beeline
- Monty Carlo Beeline 3
- Monty Carlo Beeline 4
- Parallel MCTS
Thanks and Kudos
My buddy Scott Clayton, an amazing programmer, made the beautiful digital prototype linked above. Without his help, this game would probably still be languishing in my game design folder. His work enabled me to make significant progress. It’s amazing how great it is to be able to test ideas with a bunch of AIs kicking the tires.
Join the Discussion
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