I have some fond memories of playing a few graph-paper based games in my childhood (Hungary). One was an open map version of tic tac toe, where the goal was to

I have some fond memories of playing a few graph-paper based games in my childhood (Hungary). One was an open map version of tic tac toe, where the goal was to get 5 of your symbol in a line. This game was called "amoeba", and if you won, you got to draw an outline around the board so far (which tended to look like an amoeba). Another one was a kind of racing game. You'd draw the boundaries racing track on graph paper, where the race track would be several blocks wide at all points. Players would start near each other at the starting line, and get to update their velocity by one in both the x and y axes, so effectively you carried a lot of momentum. If you went out of the allowed area, you lost. So, the game revolved around being able to judge the maximum speed / momentum that would still allow you to take the corner. Later on, I lived in other countries, and never ran into so many of these pen and graph paper games. No idea why.