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Show HN: Tiao, A two-player turn-based board game
Hi HN,
I built this digital version of Tiao, a two-player turn based strategy board game. Think Checkers meets Go. It's free, runs in the browser, has multiplayer, AI, over the board mode and a lot of other neat things. The source is on GitHub (AGPL).
The game was originally designed by my friend Andreas Edmeier. He created the rules and has been playtesting and refining the game design for years. I built the website for it. The core in about 2 weeks using TypeScript, Next.js, Express, Websockets, and MongoDB. Fully dockerized, deployed on a Hetzner VPS with Coolify. Authentication with better-auth. Real-time gameplay, ELO matchmaking, OpenPanel analytics, and a fully functional achievements system.
Play it: https://playtiao.com https://playtiao.com
Source: https://github.com/trebeljahr/tiao https://github.com/trebeljahr/tiao
Happy to answer questions about the tech, the game design, or anything else.
My hope is that more people will play this game because I think it is genuinely fun and would be cool to one day see people play this on a Go board or on their phones/computers.
Have a good one.
- rytill 5mo agoHey! I played against a bot and it was pretty fun. Small suggestion: too many queues can make it very difficult to build up a network of players at first. I'd suggest, for now, lowering the amount of available time control queues so that two players who happen to be on at the same time are more likely to actually find a game.
- trebeljahr 5mo agoThat is such a good idea. I just looked at lichess and copied their time controls queue screen/options. But you're so right! I'm thinking which time control would be best for the beginning... 10 mins maybe?
- rytill 5mo agoThat’s the most common time control on chess.com according to this article: https://www.chess.com/article/view/time-controls-and-game-results-on-chess-com https://www.chess.com/article/view/time-controls-and-game-re... It sounds like a good idea to me!
- scythmic_waves 5mo agoIt's fun! I play some chess but I am not a natural at this game. I think I need an AI easier than easy haha
- mrblampo 5mo agoMe too!
- ymaws 5mo agoI can't beat easy, incredibly addictive game :)
- trebeljahr 5mo agoYay :)
- homeonthemtn 5mo agoI appreciate the tutorial. I thought it was well done. I'd love to see something like that in some board games I've played.
- WillMorr 5mo agoClever! I really appreciate how well done the tutorial is, it's just about the easiest game intro I've ever experienced.
- trebeljahr 5mo agoThanks :)
- trebeljahr 5mo agoI put a lot of work trying to make it as smooth as possible. But there's still some rough edges I think, have to play test it more with friends, just the amount of different assumptions that people bring to a tutorial and trying to handle all of them without being overwhelming is such a tricky balance to get right haha
- Rendello 5mo agoCool! I've tried (and I guess failed) to build two of my favourite combinatorial games: the ancient "Konane" and the modern "Shōbu". At least the latter's project taught me property-based testing in Erlang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dnane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dnane https://boardgamegeek.com/video/482389/shobu/how-to-play-shobu https://boardgamegeek.com/video/482389/shobu/how-to-play-sho...
- trebeljahr 5mo agoI've never heard of either before but they look like a lot of fun :) I like the video introduction on the board game geek site, maybe I should film something like this with my friend for Tiao and also put a page up there? :D
- Rendello 5mo agoDefinitely!
- ayazumi 5mo ago[dead]
- simplify 5mo agoCool concept! I play Go, and it's extremely unnerving that all the good shapes you play in Go are essentially the worst shapes you can play in Tiao :D
- trebeljahr 5mo agoHaha yeah :D
- mock-possum 5mo agoOh wow I am terrible at this Nice implementation though, plays pretty well in n my little bitty mobile screen
- gammalost 5mo agoNow I am interested in playing a board game that is not turn-based
- oniony 5mo agoYeah, I play a lot of board games and was confused by the explicit statement that it was turned based, as most board games are turned based and realtime boardgames are pretty exceptional. Anyhow, off the top of my head: * Galaxy Trucker * Pendulum * Captain Sonar * Sidereal Confluence * Kitchen Rush
- trebeljahr 5mo agoOh true haha :) I guess I just added this "turn based" phrase because it's online and for me felt somehow more descriptive of what it is, but you're absolutely right. And now I also wonder what would a non-turn based board game look like? I'll have to try one of those you recommended and find out :)
- bdsa 5mo agoMagic Maze Bananagrams probably others from my shelves
- trebeljahr 5mo agoBananagrams is fun. I think Dobble is another example :)
- tajd 5mo agoI loved this. A shameless plug for myself and my own investigations into the world of old strategy games - https://tom-dickson.com/blog/trias-game-investigation/ https://tom-dickson.com/blog/trias-game-investigation/ - was where I did an investigation into the game called Trias/ternii lapilli which is like an old version of tic tac toe.
- trebeljahr 5mo agohehe shameless plugs are the best. You often get to find new stuff that way and something of the fun of a community like HN is to get to know about all the interesting stuff that other people are doing. Unless you overdo the shameless plugging ofc. Also it's funny I remember playing this game you solved, but back with friends in high school during Latin classes haha but without knowing it's name. Also the algorithm you construct for the AI is pretty similar to what Tiao is using as far as I can tell :)
- zem 5mo agogreat game and very nice implementation!
- smlavine 5mo agoVery fun game! Has this been released before? This is the only place I can find that mentions it.
- trebeljahr 5mo agono, this is new. Still in the process of making pages everywhere + submitting to Boardgames Geek and so on :) also my friend is contacting publishers so maybe this might exist as a real, non-digital thing soon too! (I mean it sorta does already because you can play this with a Go board)
- smlavine 5mo agoFinally won a game against the Easy bot on the 9x9 board after around 10 tries. Seems like if you want to force a win, you have to think about how to put your opponent in "Zugzwang" (to borrow a Chess term).
- yashwi_ 5mo agoNice implementation. Out of curiosity, how are you handling multiplayer state sync? For a board game like this I’d imagine sending move events and letting clients recompute the board locally rather than syncing the whole board every turn. Curious what approach you took.
- trebeljahr 5mo agoYou can look at the repo to find out the details. Essentially sending moves over web socket and the server having authority to accept/reject them to prevent cheating moves. Client updates optimistically and rolls back if server rejects/network times out etc.
- mylifeandtimes 5mo agowould be great to have a 'learner' mode where I could take back a move after the computer jumps 5 of my pieces :) I'd also appreciate if illegal moves highlighed in a slightly less intense color, so we could see they were illegal. At the moment, when I'm hovering over the board, I don't know if a move is legal or not until I click-- and then it is too late!
- gurjeet 5mo ago> ... 'learner' mode where I could take back a move after the computer ... The 'Undo move' button does exactly that.
- trebeljahr 5mo agowas about to say that ^^
- littlekey 5mo agoI thought I was winning and then the bot jumped 5 of my pieces to win D: Good fun and a great new way to use a Go board to keep things fresh, thanks for making this.
- trebeljahr 5mo agoyay :) play it with friends in real life
- lucy_hnatchuk 5mo agoA really nice game, just the thing to take your mind off things for a few minutes.
- misbau 5mo agoThat's really cool I enjoyed playing that and love the look of it too.
- lynn_lee 5mo agolooks cool :)