JoelE recently posted some thoughts on “the differences in feel between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2” which I found interesting, even though I haven’t played those games.

I am particularly impressed by the game JoelE invented to demonstrate his thesis:

To explore what kind of effect secondary military objectives have on games, I made a simple game that can be played on a chess board. Here are the rules:

• 1s can move 1 space
• 2s can move 2 spaces
• 3s can move 3 spaces etc.
• Green spaces upgrade from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc.
• Each upgrade space can be only used once per piece.
• To take a piece, move into it.
• The game is lost when all pieces are gone

Here is a picture of the starting position of the game:

If you guys want to try this game, and see how the upgrade spaces affect it, you can play on a chess board, using pawns for level 1, horses for level 2, bishops for level 3, queen for level 4, and king for level 5. You may need to improvise if you run out of pieces.

— JoelE @ teamliquid.net

This is brilliant: re-purposing a chessboard as logic analyzer for computer game strategies.