Board games with emergent complexity? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Some games are complicated - they have really complex rules. Examples of this are games where you have to track many different types of tokens, with different rules for each.

Other games have really simple rules, but still manage to produce extreme complexity in they way they are played.

Go is the perfect example of this. It literally has 2-3 rules, but because you can play anywhere, the complexity it can produce is wide and deep, to the point that tomes have been written on how to play it.

What other boardgames exist that have very simple rules, but produce complex and interesting game play?

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I recall that the client display some complexity number for every game you play. Unfortunately, I don't have computer access ATM so I'm not able to run the Java app (it's probably doable on Android, but meh..). I believe most of the worlds abstract strategy games are in the database/library, so you can just check them out.

I also found this: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/284017/estimating-abstract-game-complexity-using-ludii

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Cool. Those results (especially Go and Backgammon) make me think that what I'm looking for is mostly related to the branching factor..

Would be interesting to find some non-abstract games with a large branching factor..

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It might also be interesting to plot complexity/branching over time. Since you mention emergent complexity. Also, one might want to do some intelligent filtering or compression when it comes to branching so that it doesn't account for too irrelevant moves.

this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025

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