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Description: Science, Philosophy and Miscellaneous Musings
If you’ve read this blog in recent years, you’ll be well aware that I consider Shogi one of the finest games ever created, surpassed only by its larger cousin Chu Shogi , which I believe to be the greatest traditional Chess-like game on the planet. As I’ve been working with Stephen Tavener and his Ai Ai software to slowly and laboriously bring Shogi and its modern variants to life as well as the fascinating historical variants , I’ve been inspired to build on what I’ve learned about the historical Shogi va
In this article I’ll talk a bit about the process of creating this variant, my design goals for the game, and my own evaluation of what makes a Shogi game feel like a Shogi game. As this variant has evolved through constant, endless playtesting and experimentation, I feel I’ve learned a lot about what makes the Shogi family work so well, so I decided to share this here to generate discussion and hopefully help others who may be experimenting with Shogi variants of their own.
While testing the various historical Shogi variants in Ai Ai, I spent quite a bit of time with Wa Shogi . Wa Shogi is an 11×11 game with 27 pieces in each player’s army, and like Tori Shogi it uses a completely different set of pieces from the normal Shogi assortment, including different Pawns and Kings (though with the same moves). Wa Shogi is an excellent game in its modern form, in which it’s played with drops, but I felt the game lacks a certain intensity compared to the other historical variants, bec
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