8 ms·
Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe
- Kharacternyk 3y agoHi HN, I played this game a lot in school over here in Ukraine and was surprised that there is almost no coverage [1] of it in English. So, I built this tiny website where one can read the rules and play the game online. There is also an optional game mode that is impossible IRL on paper (with the "fog of war"). The game is usually known as "virus wars", but I didn't feel like registering a domain name with the word "virus" in it, so Paper Tactics it is:) [1] https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/viruswars https://www.iggamecenter.com/en/rules/viruswars is the only English source I know, there is also a Wikipedia article in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf_der_Viren https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampf_der_Viren
- untech 3y agoI guessed the game just by “show HN” title :) We played this game a lot in the Urals during high school, but upon arriving in Moscow for higher education discovered that locals don’t know about it. Good memories. I implemented a version of it in MIDletPascal in my 10th grade. Another popular modification was “rivers” which would drown any unit placed in the next turn, and also support for 3rd and 4th player, you just have to have enough pens of different colors :)
- airstrike 3y agoI would suggest listing players "looking for partners" somewhere so I can join their game instead of being specifically limited to finding someone with the exact same variants as me. I may be fine with, say, any number of neutral units, so I could be matched with anyone looking for 15%, 25% or 35% instead of having to guess which number will yield a match quicker
- Timshel 3y agoI second this :) Alternative could be to list open games. Anyway was fun to learn thx OP :).
- gus_massa 3y agoI had to play a few games to understand the rules, but I'm wining most games. How good is the bot? It's strange that you can make a few moves in each turn. With 1 move the strategy is too easy. Which is the standard lenght of the turns?
- Kharacternyk 3y agoThe bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :) > Which is the standard lenght of the turns? The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.
- gus_massa 3y ago> It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. I agree. [spoiler alert] I tried with 2 or 3 moves per turn. My strategy was to advace in diagonal to have a lot of space in tha back, and keep some distance from the oponent. When it advances, I wall the pieces. If it doesn't advance I fill my backshard space. With 2 or 3 it's humanly learnable in 10 minutes. I imagine that 7 moves would be much ore complex, but sadly I have no time now. Perhaps you can progem the bot to advance more in the first few turns. (Assuming my strategy is good.)
- Kharacternyk 3y agoYour strategy is definitely good — capturing territory to fill it later when advancing doesn't make sense is important. 7 moves are more complex, but much less so when playing against the bot. Your suggestion about making the bot eager to advance makes sense, thanks. Hope you'll play a few times against a human opponent in the future:)
- gus_massa 3y agoTwo small sugerstions: * Make a small pause as if the bot is thinking each move. Probably .1 or .2 seconds is enough and not boring. We made a few games a long time ago, and a small pause makes it easier to understand the rules. * When the game finished, I still can see my token as if I can draw it. It's very confusing until I notice the congratulations message. Don't show the token whe the game ended.
- hombre_fatal 3y agogreat polish on the UX.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoThanks!
- whywhywouldyou 3y agoA game like this with a million variations is almost immediately uninteresting. It makes it seem like the rules / strategy aren't fully formed and doesn't feel like something worth learning. The implementation is great though.
- couchand 3y agoOTOH if all the variations are interesting games in their own right, the family is quite brilliant.
- nicup12345689 3y agoAu contraire, domino and chess are so mechanic that they're boring. Leave them to the machines
- gpm 3y agoChess has a million variations too... Some of the more common ones: - Played seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess - Played socially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess - Played non-seriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losing_chess
- airstrike 3y agoRummy has a million variations and it's great. I'm partial to Brazilian Buraco, but only the specific variant my grandpa taught me ;-) https://www.pagat.com/rummy/buraco.html https://www.pagat.com/rummy/buraco.html
- aidenn0 3y agoRummy, whist, euchre, and chess all have many variants.
- Karliss 3y agoHow would you typically mark the walls when playing with pen and paper?
- johngalt 3y agoDraw a square around the X or O.
- adzm 3y agoOr just shade it lightly
- Kharacternyk 3y agoWe shaded it as we usually played with pens of different colors.
- timmit 3y agoGame rules are simple, great job to bring it online.
- adamredwoods 3y agoNice job! Nikoli (the company that is credited to the rise of Sudoku!) has a lot of pen and paper games. Check it out. https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/ https://www.nikoli.co.jp/en/
- steve_wilson 3y agoGreat job at explaining the rules! Tried it out from my phone, how do I „confirm“ a move? I seem to be unable to actually finish a move.
- CSMastermind 3y agoAt least by default you get three moves per turn. Try playing more moves.
- frei 3y agoUnfortunately the bot is not very good. Just by reading the rules I was able to beat it every time on multiple rulesets. The matchmaking is also difficult to find a partner since the rules are so customizable, and there's no way to tell what rules potential partners could be searching with. Maybe a list of games that are looking for an opponent would be good.
- chrisfosterelli 3y agoI just read the first paragraph and then decided I wanted to play and I still beat the bot first try. At least that means the game rules are fairly discoverable :)
- esrauch 3y agoI didn't understand the rules until most of the way through the game and I still won against the bot. I'm not clear if its really doing anything better than playing randomly based on that.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoIt's a weighted random choice, so a bit better than randomly because of the weights, but not much better.
- russellbeattie 3y agoYeah, the bot is good for learning, but after a few games it becomes easy to just go after it directly, kill the Os which connect the walls and win easily.
- samcheng 3y agoIt would be nice to have an option to play against someone locally (sharing the same computer)
- Brajeshwar 3y agoI think this is very similar to one of the games that I played growing up. I'm from a remote corner of India and everyone there knows how to play (school, family gatherings, etc). I tried teaching my kids but they find it too boring and mundane.
- CSMastermind 3y agoWell this is very addictive, thank you for sharing. If you're looking for feature requests then the ability to view move history (especially after the game is over) and the ability to share completed games would be nice. I see a game ID but it's not clear to me I can do anything with it.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoGood suggestions, thanks! The only purpose of the ID for now is to allow people to verify that they are matched by checking that the IDs are equal on both sides.
- iammjm 3y agoThis is super fun. But: I am winning most of my games as green / if I am going first. I struggle otherwise, not having the initiative
- Kharacternyk 3y agoBeing second is beneficial at the end of the game — the first player will run out of the legal moves quicker, all other things being equal. I'm not sure it completely balances out the first player advantage, though.
- calvinmorrison 3y agoWhat is this game called? I spent many hours during sermons playing this with my siblings, but I am American
- Kharacternyk 3y agoIt's commonly known as "virus wars".
- evolve2k 3y agoHere’s my super short description for those that have never played. Draw a grid of dots on some blank paper. Your X, your friend is O. Start by drawing a line between two adjacent dots, no diagonals (this is a wall). Take it in turns to draw a line between two adjacent dots. If you draw a line that closes a square (or two!)(the smallest possible square), claim the closed square/s by writing a X inside the claimed square. Game ends when nothing more to draw, count up your symbols for the winner.
- airstrike 3y agodifferent game
- zibada 3y agoThe rules of the game are itself like a virus. Looks like everyone here played a slightly different variant. It mutated wildly across space and time. After I learned two different rule sets from two different sources, I went on and invented my own version. It became an instant hit in our class for many years to come. Basically: 1. the map is randomized, with some "islands" randomly drawn, separating the map into "land" and "water"; map size is the whole A5 sheet, which is around 30x40 I think 2. player has 10 moves per turn, moving on "water" cells counts as 2 moves 3. the objective is not to kill everything, but only the enemy starting unit ("the mothership") 4. we even added FFA multiplayer later, where each eliminated opponent nets you +2 moves per turn for the rest of the game, to promote aggression. The diplomacy was intense at times, with "vassal states" and coalitions formed against stronger players. Oh the memories.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoWe did play on an A5 as well! We called the variant "the Lord of the Rings", it was two players that played humans and elves versus one who played orcs. Only humans were allowed to move diagonally, elves could place walls over an empty space, and the orc player had more moves per turn and two bases.
- autoexec 3y agoA pen-and-paper game, and yet all I get is "This web application requires JavaScript to run." I'm sure there's some kind of interactive demo or something, but do the rules themselves need JS?
- klysm 3y agoYou'd get more if you turned on JavaScript I think
- Kharacternyk 3y agoThe rules don't need JS, I should have probably server-side-rendered them, sorry.
- shusaku 3y agoWhen I was in school, for some reason I had an enormous amount of free time in class where I’d be sitting there quietly with just a pencil and paper to kill time. I’d invent strategy games to play against myself, or draw out a go board (it was a pain to erase captured stones!). Better than the alternative of seeing how long I could hold my breath. I wish I had known about this game, it’s perfect for pencil and paper!
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoRelated: https://harmmade.com/vectorracer/ https://harmmade.com/vectorracer/
- dudul 3y agoSource for calling it "almost unknown"? I'm from Europe and this game is totally known. I had a university project to program one in C. The bot especially was fun to implement.
- dmichulke 3y ago> Source for calling it "almost unknown"? I see what you did there!
- gwervc 3y agoAlso "unknown in Europe" then explains the game is played in Ukraine... I understand some level of clickbait is needed to catch attention but that straight up lying here. I expected a game from Asia, Africa or South America.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoI'm sorry, it's not intentional. When Ukrainians refer to Europe, they almost always mean the EU. We need some mental shift to consistently include ourselves when talking about Europe.
- brnt 3y agoAltough I am from the Netherlands and people here do this too (everything east of Germany is not Europe...), it always bothered me we call Eastern Europe eastern! The eastern third of Europe is Russia! Ukraine and the rest of 'eastern' Europe are really central Europe. AFAIK the Poles do this correctly consistently.
- kstenerud 3y agoI don't get it. What is the purpose of a "wall" unit? If you just want to fill up a grid, why do you need more than one kind of unit? Is the wall just decorative? It doesn't seem to affect anything at all.
- bfdm 3y agoI suggest playing, you'll quickly see it's about strategy of taking and locking squares. Walls can't be taken back and cut off chains to other walls. Never played before buts it's interesting.
- curryberto 3y agoa wall can't be destroyed but can attack like a unit, but it must have reinforcements from another unit behind your lines. So the strategy is to prevent your enemies from being able to make walls by placing your units strategically, and if they do make walls to interrupt their supply lines so they can't attack anymore.
- tianshuo 3y agoFeature Request: A lot of people disconnect after some time, there should be some kind of countdown for auto-victory.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoIt should detect the browser window/tab being closed and automatically concede. You are right that there is no timeout, though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wetpaws 3y ago[dead]
- rkagerer 3y agoI didn't realize at first you get three moves per turn (by default). I kept wondering what trick the bot used to build multiple walls at once.
- pmontra 3y agoI like that it has the concept of supply lines: a wall works (it can expand) only if supplied by a cross. I attempt to cut the opponent supply lines by looking for and suppressing every cross in contact with its walls but I have to protect my crosses.
- cookiengineer 3y agoI don't understand the capturing mechanic? Playing against the bot always leads to sudden capture of dozens of units at once. How and why does this happen? Are you able to surround units or get bonus turns for walling a unit? The Learn page is a little unclear on this.
- teamonkey 3y agoIt took me a few goes to work it out. The key - which is mentioned in the docs but IMO not clearly enough - is that one of your active units must be adjacent to a run of walls in order to make those walls active.
- Kharacternyk 3y agoYou can capture instead of placing a unit as a move. The bot may give an impression of capturing a few units at once because the whole turn (3 moves by default) of the bot is computed and rendered at once.
- johnsondavies 3y agoThis is a traditional game called "Voyna Virusov" or "Virus War". There is a version of it on Pencil and Paper Games with clearer rules, and some background history: http://www.papg.com/show?5SB0 http://www.papg.com/show?5SB0
- Wildgoose 3y agoThanks - I was struggling to understand the game explanation on the original site.
- duckworth 3y agoGlad it wasn't just me. I found them challenging to grok due to their complexity and lack of clarity in key aspects such as movement, grid layout, and strategic objectives. *The fact that the pencil symbol controls the number of moves per turns, which was 3 by default, confused my learning process for a good 10 minutes as I had no idea what was going on.
- fodkodrasz 3y agoThe game is fun, had a very interesting match with some random person from the other side of the world, but it would be great if I could create a private lobby just to play this game with a friend over and over again :)
- Kharacternyk 3y agoIf you and your friend both change the preferences a bit, e.g., grid size, it's very likely that you will match. It's more of a workaround though, I should absolutely put some effort into creating a lobby.
- fodkodrasz 3y agoThanks for the idea, will try it! Thanks for sharing this fun game!
- JoeDaDude 3y agoThis is the BGG entry for the game, or at least a very similar game: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68214/virus-wars https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68214/virus-wars
- PoignardAzur 3y agoThere's a pitfall with the settings: because there are so many settings, and you can only connect with people using the same settings, and there's no lobby or way to know which settings other people have set, if you change any setting you're likely locking yourself out of the matchmaking pool, until you erase your cookies or remember the initial config. Otherwise, fun game, good implementation!
- purplepatrick 3y agoI’ve been playing it for several days now without fully understanding all the rules. I like it but I win every game easily. I just neutralize the opponent’s marks and then lock them in. I’m not quite clear on how to make it harder…