Ataxx

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Image:Ataxx.png

Ataxx is a board game which first appeared in 1990 as an arcade video game by The Leland Corporation. According to online resources, the game was invented by Dave Crummack and Craig Galley in 1988 and was called Infection. It was first programmed on Amiga, Commodore 64, and Atari ST. The game is purportedly in the public domain now.

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Game play

The game play is similar to that of reversi.

Two players take turns placing pieces on a 7x7 board. In the starting position, each player has two pieces of his color around diagonally opposite corners of the board. Player take turns to move any one of their pieces to any square up to two steps away, including diagonally. If the piece is moved to a neighboring (in any direction, including diagonal) square, an additional piece is left on the starting square of the move, so the player has one more piece on the board after the move than before. If the piece is moved to a square two steps away, no new piece is added. After the move, all enemy pieces adjacent to the piece moved change to its color.

The game ends when one or both of the players can't move. The player with the most pieces wins.

The board may be of several different configurations, by having certain squares filled (not playable).

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Strategies

Ataxx strategies really depend on what level computer you're playing against. On Very Easy/Easy you can come out with any formation. On medium/normal you might want to begin by first making a triangle with your beginning pieces (3-piece triangle). On hard/very hard, an odd strategy is to copy the computer, but this is extremely hard because the computer has solutions for this (it's the computer). You might want to think of all the possibilities of your move, however, unlike chess, you don't want to think more than 2 steps ahead because anything can happen.

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Other versions

The arcade version is timed, similarly to blitz chess. Each player's timer counts down while it is their turn to move; they lose if it reaches zero, but may buy more time (100 seconds per quarter) while the game is in progress. After completing a game (whether they won or lost), a player may choose whether or not to play another game with the time remaining.

Ataxx can be found all over the internet in numerous variations including board size. The GNOME desktop environment for Linux features an Ataxx game.

Ataxx can be played by email, using Richard Rognlie's Play-By-eMail Server.

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Ataxx clones

The most popular of the Ataxx clones is Boogers. It was an online 4 player version that was hosted in the pre-internet dial up game network called the ImagiNation Network.

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External links

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