Abstract Board Games

Games

online board games

SHOW HN2025

180points
87comments
#371of 3,837 in 2025
Top 10%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

LovedMost comments that take a side are positive

5 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 1 critical, out of 17 comments about the project. Thread score +0.18.

Execution: 1 for, 1 againstIdea: 2 for, 0 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Guest play without account is appreciated

    From 1 comment
    • I'm personally a big fan of asymmetrical games. A game I've wanted to play but have never had the board to play it on is Unlur [0]. Arimaa [1] is another one with some history…
      ixwt on HN
  • Bots are fun and review after games is useful

    From 1 comment
    • What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards!…
      tasuki on HN

Objections

  • Site was down for at least one user

    From 1 comment

Requests

  • Add single device two-player mode

    From 2 comments
    • nice website, Thanks for sharing. I like board games, so I'll definitely try some (or all) of them. > I'm always looking for new games or new features to add Nice feature to add…
      nenadalm on HN
    • How about 2 players playing on the same device, i.e. offline play? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dnane might be a fit.
      pred_ on HN
  • Add more games such as TwixT, Quoridor, Abalone, Gipf

    From 4 comments
    • What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards!…
      tasuki on HN
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abalone_%28board_game%29 would be cool
      7373737373 on HN
    • Reminds me of boardspace, though the UI is much cleaner. You should try to add the Gipf games at some point, they are very wonderful!
      robobro on HN
    • Check out Quoridor
      cgreerrun on HN
  • Larger board sizes

    From 1 comment
    • What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards!…
      tasuki on HN
  • Release source code

    From 1 comment
    • What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards!…
      tasuki on HN

Questions

  • Whether bot networks are size dependent

    From 1 comment
    • What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards!…
      tasuki on HN

Alternatives named

  • Hive

    From 2 comments
    • Hive is my favourite for anyone looking for another abstract strategy boardgame. It has been very fun and feels very deep.
      mylesp on HN
    • A fun and fairly popular one is Hive. It is a physical game akin to chess but has an active community online on https://hivegame.com/
      mylesp on HN
  • Play Abstract (play.abstractplay.com)

    From 2 comments
    • The facebook group "abstract nation" has made having a facebook account worth all the bad stuff associated with facebook. Its lead me to find a ton of great abstracts. It also…
      mrichey-9988 on HN
    • It's only correspondence play, but this site has 209 games at the moment and a reasonably active player base https://play.abstractplay.com/games Most games are quite modern,…
      bondarchuk on HN
  • Board Game Arena

    From 1 comment
    • I think "have players online at any given time" is the tough part there, but it's also the tough part for many non-abstract games. If you look around on Board Game Arena you can…
      BrenBarn on HN
  • Zillions of Games

    From 1 comment
    • This reminds me of the game engine "Zillions of Games" from the '90s. It was a basic system for describing abstract strategy games and then an AI that could play them with you.…
      kej on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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