Educational Games run with Zillions

Game: Abalone vari

Implemented by Jens Markmann 2000.
Variations by László Nagy, July 2003.


Goal: Push 6 enemy Marbles off the board.

A single Marble can make one step in any direction.
Two or three Marbles can 'slide' sideways or 'push' forward in any direction.
Such a group of Marbles can push an enemy line which consists of fewer Marbles. (Thus 2 push 1, and 3 push 2 or 1)
Enemies are captured by pushing them off the board.

Please note: Abalone vari requires Zillions of Games version 2.0 (or higher)!

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Game: Africa University

Invented and implemented by Ingo Althofer, May 2003


Two players, Black and Red, move in turn. Black drops copies of the letter A, Red drops copies of the letter U on the board. The last player to move wins.

The starting position is generated by a random refereee who places some Crosses and Flames on the board.

In this game, Zillions2 performs much better than all versions of Zillions1. If Zillions is too strong for your, please try the variant "AU with abstract letters", where player Black typically has a decisive advantage.


The letters A and U stand for "Africa University". Africa University is an international African university, located near Mutare in the eastern part of Zimbabwe. In Spring 2003 the institution had 1,100 students from about twenty African countries. For more details see the official website: www.africau.edu

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Game: Akron

Invented and implemented by Cameron Browne, October 2003,
with many thanks to Dan Troyka and Keith Carter for generous help.


Akron is a marble stacking connection game. Players win by connecting their edges of the board with a chain of their marbles. Marbles are connected if they touch orthogonally (squarely) or one rests directly upon the other.

If a chain crosses over another chain then the uppermost chain prevails; the lower chain is cut until the upper connection is removed (over/under rule).

Each turn the current player must either:
(1) Drop one of their marbles onto an empty board hole, or;
(2) Pick up one of their marbles and move it to a connected valid empty point. The marble cannot have more than one marble resting directly upon it from the level above.

An empty point is valid if it is either a board hole, or a flat stable square formed by four adjacent supporting marbles on the level below. A point is connected if a path can be traced from it back to the piece being moved, by stepping through adjacent pieces of the same colour. At least one other piece must be involved in the connected path.

Moving a marble may cause higher marbles to drop. Any dropping marbles are removed from the connectivity and support calculations for that move. That is, any marble whichs drops cannot be used as a support piece for that move, nor can it be used as part of the path connecting any destination point.

First move equalisation: The player to move second may capture the opening piece by replacement. This is not the same as swapping colours, but has the same end result of discouraging overly strong opening moves.

A player loses if they cannot move. One player must win!

The Akron home page can be found at: http://members.optusnet.com.au/cyberite/akron/akron-1.htm
Please send comments and feedback to: cameronb@optusnet.com.au

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Game: Alak

Invented by A. K. Dewdney
Modified by A. Baljeu
Implemented and circular variant by V. Everaert, February 2003.


Alak is a pseudo-Go played on a line.

Players alternate moves in dropping new stones on the board.
When a piece takes the last liberty of an enemy stone or group, this stone or group is captured (immediately).
It is forbidden to drop a stone on places left vacant by the last enemy capture (if he captured pieces).
The winner is designed by the number of stones on the board when a player is stalemated.


Zillions thinks that the game is a draw, on sufficiently long boards. So, you should not lose ! (Could it be so easy ?)

Updated 02/08/03
added board; included ZoG 1 compatible zrf (by Alfred Pfeiffer)

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Game: Alta

Created by W. D. Troyka, August 2002


Alta is a connection game played on a diamond-shaped board consisting of sixty-one squares. The players take turns placing diagonal lines, called "switches," in the squares. A switch may slant either forward or backward and is owned by the player that places it. Instead of placing a new switch on the board, a player can "toggle" the direction of one of his switches. The object of the game is to connect a player's two "nodes" at opposite corners of the board. Blue seeks to connect the top and bottom nodes and Red seeks to connect the left and right nodes. Switches belonging to either player count in the connections. If a move simultaneously connects both sets of nodes, the moving player wins. A player cannot place a switch in any of the six spaces (three on each side) adjacent to an enemy node.


Please send any comments or bug reports to dtroyka@justice.com.

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Game: Altairian

Created by W. D. Troyka, February 2002.


Altairian Checkers, recently decoded from SETI transmissions, is a checkers/draughts type game played on a radial hex board with four hexes to a side. Each player starts with ten pieces called Pods arranged on opposite sides of the board.

A Pod moves by orbiting a neighboring piece of either color, called the pivot. A Pod can orbit around a pivot through any number of empty spaces or through outer space (off the board) provided it comes to rest on an empty space on the board. It must land in a space adjacent to the pivot in the forward direction. A Pod cannot capture.

When a Pod reaches the shaded area on the far side of the board, it promotes to a War Pod. A War Pod moves like a regular Pod, with the exception that it can land on any orbital space (i.e., forward progress is not required), and it captures any enemy piece that it orbits around.

When a War Pod returns to the shaded area on its own side of the board, it promotes to a Death Pod. A Death Pod moves like a War Pod, with the added condition that it captures any enemy piece that it lands next to.

Because pieces must have pivots to move, an isolated piece is frozen. The game is won by scattering the enemy fleet and leaving it with no move. A player who has no pieces or no moves at the start of a turn loses.

Two training variants are included. In the first, the object is to promote a Pod into a War Pod. This variant focuses attention on the "civilian phase" of Altairain Checkers in which Pods maneuver for position without overtly hostile intent. This phase is characterized by the tactics of stalemate and zugzwang. In the second training variant, the object is to promote a War Pod into a Death Pod. This variant adds the "battle" phase to the "civilian" phase and focuses attention on gaining the edge in battle through construction of an ultimate weapon.

Both of the training variants are virtually draw-proof. Full Altairian Checkers usually draws when both players have an equal number of Death Pods and no other pieces. This is a draw by mutually assured destruction.

Updated 03/23/02
improved piece valuation; added sound effects

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Game: A-Maze for Two

Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, February 2003


Object: Visit all four corners and the centre before your opponent does. (3 variants)

To start the game, click on the board to place your tokens.
Move one step at a time by clicking north, east, south or west of the token.

An AREA MAZE or A-MAZE for short is a maze where you step from tile to tile, observing carefully the area of the tile you are standing on. The relative size of the area has to alternate: larger, smaller, larger, smaller, etc.

So if you go from one tile to an adjacent tile with a larger area, then the next step has to be to an adjacent smaller tile. If you don't alternate or if you move to a tile of equal area, you lose.
In this game the tiles consist of monochrome polysquares.

The first player to visit all four corners and the center wins.


Based on my Zillions game 'A-Maze 3'


More freeware as well as real puzzles and games at my homepage http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz.

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Game: A-Maze for Two II

Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, February 2003


Object: Be the first to visit the five red circles. (25 randomized variants)

To start the game, click on the board to drop your token. From then on, click where you want to go.

An AREA MAZE or A-MAZE for short is a maze where you step from tile to tile, observing carefully the area of the tile you are standing on. The relative size of the area has to alternate: larger, smaller, larger, smaller, etc.

So if you go from one tile to an adjacent tile with a larger area, then the next step has to be to an adjacent smaller tile.
In this game the tiles consist of diamonds, circles and squares. The diamonds clearly have a smaller area than the circles, and the circles have as smaller area than the squares.

You can go orthogonally or diagonally one step at a time.

You win when you have visited the five red circles before your opponent does.

Variants 2 to 5: Same as variant 1, but with less and less circles on the board, which makes it more difficult to play.
Variants 6 to 10: Same as variants 1 to 5, but whenever you have made a diagonal move, one tile is randomly taken off the board.
Variants 11 to 15: Two tiles disappearing after every diagonal move.
Variants 16 to 20: Same as variants 1 to 5, but whenever you make any move, one tile is randomly taken off the board.
Variants 20 to 25: Two tiles disappearing after every move.


Based on my Zillions game 'A-Maze 5'


More freeware as well as real puzzles and games at my homepage http://karl.kiwi.gen.nz.

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Game: Ancient Battles

Invented and implemented by J.M. Salo, June 2002


Win by killing both enemy generals.
There are four kinds of pieces:
infantry cohorts that move one or two spaces in any direction,
Archers that move only one space but can kill enemy units from a distance of 1 to 2 spaces,
Chariots that move 1 to 4 spaces.


Zillions is not meant for wargames. However, Ancient Battles works quite well recreating a battle between two ancient armies.

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Game: Andantino

Invented by David Smith in 1995,
implemented by L. Lynn Smith, June 2003.

Andantino is normally played upon an infinite field of hexagonal cells. But for this implementation a hexagonal field of 10-cell sides will be used.

Black has considered to have played on the central cell, White must follow with a placement to any empty cell which is adjacent.

Each player must then play a Stone to an empty cell which is adjacent at least two other Stones of any color.

A player wins by either forming a straight row of five friendly Stones, or completely surrounding one or more opponent Stones with friendly Stones.

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Game: Annexation

Invented by John W. Mollett,
implemented by K. Franklin, March 2003


While Waterman's 1888 patented Reversi returned to prominence in the 1970's via Othello, here is my estimation of Mollett's Game of Annexation - first published in 1870, using the same standard revisions.

Black and White alternate putting disks on vacant squares from an initial opening position. Each disk must be placed so that it sandwiches one or more enemy disks between itself and another friendly disk, with no empty squares intervening. The sandwiched enemy disks are flipped, changing colour. If one player can't move, he must pass his turn.
The game ends when neither side can move, usually when the whole board is filled. The winner is the player with the most pieces of his colour.

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Game: Annuvin

Invented and implemented by Jeff Roy, November 2001.


In this game, capturing your opponent's pieces makes their remaining pieces more powerful.

Each player begins with six pieces. On his move, a player may move one of his pieces up to n spaces in any combination of directions, where n varies depending on the number of pieces he has remaining:

Six pieces remaining: one space per turn
Five pieces remaining: two spaces per turn
Four pieces remaining: three spaces per turn
Three pieces remaining: four spaces per turn
Two pieces remaining: five spaces per turn
One piece remaining: six spaces per turn.

A piece may move over intervening pieces. A piece may capture an opposing piece by moving onto it. If a piece makes a capture before it has used all of the spaces available to it that move, it may continue to make additional captures until it has moved its limit. The player who captures all of his opponent's pieces wins.

Under the official rules, a player also wins if he reduces his opponent to one piece without losing any of his own pieces (this addresses the fact that six pieces cannot quite cover the entire board). I couldn't figure out how to implement this, so the Zillions version doesn't include this rule.

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Game: AntiStack4

Implemented by Key McKinnis, March 2001.


Force the other player to connect four in a row.
You cannot make a move in the same column as your opponent did on his last turn.
If the board fills up and no four has been connected then the first player wins.

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Game: Apex

Invented by Jochen Dreschsler, 2001.
Implemented by L. Lynn Smith, May 2002


Apex is a two-player game upon the cells of an 8x8 field.

Each player uses two opposite board edges to introduce Stones. White has the first and eighth rank, Black has the first and eighth file. Each player has 11 Stones.

At each turn, the player must do one of the following:
Drop a Stone.
Move a Stone.
Capture a Stone.

A Stone is dropped into an empty cell on one of the board edges controlled by the player. After dropping, the Stone may slide, orthogonally or diagonally, until it meets another Stone or a board edge. The Stone may stop at any cell.

A Stone is moved by sliding orthogonally or diagonally until it encounters another Stone or a board edge.

A Stone captures by sliding into a non-adjacent cell occupied by the opponent. The captured Stone is returned to its owner for further play.

The game is won by the player who is able to form a chain of Stones connecting their two board edges. Stones are considered adjacent both orthogonally and diagonally.

Jumping is not allowed. The capture of an adjacent Stone is not allowed.


The game was entered in the 2001 8x8 Game Design Contest, and considered among the best.

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Game: Apex 5x5

Original 8x8 game invented by Jochen Dreschsler, 2001, and implemented by L. Lynn Smith, May 2002
this implementation by Markus Salo, August 2002.

Apex 5x5 is a two-player game upon the cells of an 5x5 field.

Each player uses two opposite board edges to introduce Stones. White has the first and eighth rank, Black has the first and eighth file. Each player has 11 Stones.

At each turn, the player must do one of the following:
Drop a Stone.
Move a Stone.
Capture a Stone.

A Stone is dropped into an empty cell on one of the board edges controlled by the player. After dropping, the Stone may slide, orthogonally or diagonally, until it meets another Stone or a board edge. The Stone may stop at any cell.

A Stone is moved by sliding orthogonally or diagonally until it encounters another Stone or a board edge.

A Stone captures by sliding into a non-adjacent cell occupied by the opponent. The captured Stone is returned to its owner for further play.

The game is won by the player who is able to form a chain of Stones connecting their two board edges. Stones are considered adjacent both orthogonally and diagonally.

Jumping is not allowed. The capture of an adjacent Stone is not allowed.


The original 8x8 game was entered in the 2001 8x8 Game Design Contest, and considered among the best.

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Game: Area

Invented and implemented by Karl Scherer, October 2003.


Object: Occupy more area than your opponent.
(version 2.0; 4 variants)

You play as Red against Blue.
First click the board to allow Zillions to drop a few black squares. The black squares are neutral.

In each move you paint a rectangle with your colour. You do this by clicking the top left corner first, then the lower right corner. Your rectangle may not include any black squares or any of your opponent's squares.

The player occupying the most area in the end wins.
To balance the advantage of the first player, he may only create a rectangle of width 1 (i.e., a row or file) in his first move.

Variant 2: played on the bigger 30x30 board.
Variants 3,4: Here you are allowed to include in your new rectangle some positions that you already own.


More freeware and real puzzles and games at my homepage: karl.kiwi.gen.nz.

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Game: Aries

Invented and implemented by Chris Huntoon, February 2003.

Rams move like Rooks. When a Ram lands on an enemy Ram, it butts it, pushing it one space farther in the same direction. This may set off a chain reaction of pushes if additional enemy Rams lie in the same direction. Friendly Rams stay in place. Captures are made by either butting an enemy Ram off the board or by butting an enemy Ram into a friendly Ram.

The object is to be the first to move one of your Rams into your opponent's corner square. If a player loses all his Rams, he automatically forfeits the game. Repetition is a loss.

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Game: Arimaa

Invented and implemented by Omar and Aamir Syed, November 2002


See the 'Learn to Play' section on www.arimaa.com for an animated tutorial.

Arimaa was designed to be difficult for computers to play, yet easy for people to learn and play. A challenge of $10,000 USD is offered to the first person or company that can build a computer program which can defeat the best Arimaa player prior to 2020.

Objective
The first player to get just one Rabbit across the board to the other side wins. If both players lose all their Rabbits the game is a draw.

Setup
The game has no fixed starting position for the pieces. The game starts with an empty board. First Gold sets down all the pieces in any order on the first 2 rows. Silver can then set down all the pieces on the first 2 rows closest to Silvers side. Once the peices have been set down the players take turn moving the pieces with Gold going first. Each player has 8 Rabbits, 2 Cats, 2 Dogs, 2 Horses, 1 Camel and 1 Elephant.

Steps
In each turn the players can take up to 4 steps. All pieces move the same way, which is laterally (i.e. left, right, forward and back). Except that Rabbits cannot move backwards. Moving a piece from its current square to an adjacent square counts as one step. The 4 steps can be distributed across multiple pieces. Thus a player can move one piece 4 steps, four pieces 1 step each,one piece 3 steps and another piece 1 step, etc. The same piece may take steps in different directions. At least 1 step must be taken on each turn to change the state of the board.

Pushing and Pulling
A piece can push opponents weaker pieces to any laterally adjacent square and move into its place. This is called 'pushing' and uses up 2 steps; one for pushing the opponents piece and one for moving into its square. Pushing must be completed within a players turn and cannot be distributed across turns. The Elephant is the strongest and can push any other piece except another Elephant. The Elephant is followed in strength by the Camel, then the Horse, Dog, Cat and finally the Rabbit which is the weakest and cannot push any other piece. Pieces of equal strength cannot push each other.
A piece can also pull opponents weaker pieces which are laterally adjacent into the square that it moved from. This is called 'pulling' and uses up 2 steps; one for moving the piece and one for pulling the opponents piece. A piece cannot pull while completing a push.

Freezing
A piece that is alone and laterally adjacent to an opponents stronger piece is considered 'frozen' and cannot move. A piece is considered to be alone if there is no friendly pieces laterally adjacent to it. The lonely weaker piece can be 'unfrozen' by moving any other friendly piece next to it. When no longer alone the weaker piece is unfrozen and can immediately begin to move within the same turn.

Traps
The squares c3, f3, c6 and f6 are called 'traps'. Any piece that is standing on a trap square is immeadiatly removed from the board if there are no friendly piece laterally adjacent to it.
A piece may safely stand on or pass through a trap square as long as there is a friendly piece adjacent to it. If the friendly piece moves away then the lonely piece on the trap square is immeadiately removed from the board.


The development of Arimaa began on January 15th 1999 while Omar Syed was trying to teach his son Aamir how to play Chess. By the way the name Arimaa is really A followed by Aamir spelled backwards.

Updated 05/10/03
several modifications by L. Lynn Smith

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Game: Armada

Created by Chris Huntoon.

Objective: Be the first to seize control of your enemy's dock by landing a ship there. The docks are the corner squares marked by an anchor. Along the same lines, a player can also win by completely eliminating the enemy's fleet.

On a turn, a ship may sail forward, turn, or attack.

Ships can not sail backwards or sideways, but only in the direction their prow is facing. Nor do ships sail straight forward, but at a slight angle. A ship can move forward one space diagonally to an empty square.

A ship may stay within the same space and make a one quarter turn to face a different compass direction. For example: a northerly-ship may turn to face the east or west.

Ships attack and sink enemy ships by firing a broadside discharge of the cannons arranged along the port or starboard sides. So for a ship to attack another it must have one of its sides to the enemy. During an attack, a ship will plow through the enemy to the vacant square beyond. (e.g. captures are made by sideways, orthogonal jumps.) If a ship can attack an enemy, it is honor-bound to do so. Multiple captures are NOT possible.

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Game: Atomic

Implemented by Joonas Kekoni, March 2002.
Pieces (c) by Karl Scherer used with permission.

You can drop atoms to any square that does not contain enemy atoms. Center squares can hold 3 atoms, borders 2 and corners only one atom. Dropping more atomes will cause an exlosion moving the atoms to adjacent squares and changing color of prior stones in the square. The moving stones may start new explosions.

You lose when you have no atoms left.

You should use Expert and over a minute think time to get some resistance.

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