boop.

The Game

Boop (technically written as boop. ) is a two player abstract game. The whole idea is based on how cats love to push items off tables and shelves, sometimes breaking them. I find this premise hilarious. Thankfully my cats don’t actually do this. To win the game, you need to have three cats in a row, i.e. just like tic tac toe. Or you need to have all 8 cats on the board.

You don’t start the game with cats. You start with 8 kittens, which can grow up to be cats. On your turn you just place one piece on the board. It pushes away all pieces next to it, possibly pushing some off the board. Pieces that drop off go back to the owner’s supply. You do push your own pieces. There are only two situations when pushing doesn’t work. If there is a piece on the other side of a piece being pushed, it prevents pushing. If a kitten tries to push a cat, the cat stays. Whenever you make three in a row, the pieces are removed and get converted to cats if any are kittens. That’s how kittens grow. Of course if you have three cats in a row you already win.

That’s all there is to the game.

The Play

This sounds like a silly and cute game, but it’s actually a serious thinky game, like most open information abstract games. There are few rules, so this is certainly much simpler than chess. Online asynchronous is probably not an ideal way to play, because the game takes many moves. You make one small move, and then have to wait for your opponent to take his move. Since there are many turns, a game can drag a long time. Online real-time would be fine. Or maybe Han and I just sucked at learning the game and we flailed about too much. 

In our game we managed to upgrade all our kittens to cats. After that the game went on for quite a bit more. We were caught in an ebb and flow cycle of placing cats then having them pushed off the board. We couldn't quite figure out how to position ourselves for three cats in a row. 

I was grey, and I had two diagonally adjacent cats. If I placed a cat on either end, I would win, because I wouldn't be able to push two cats in a row. However it was easy for Han to place an orange cat to disperse my two grey cats. 

This was the eventual checkmate situation. I had two pairs of grey cats adjacent to each other. They were far apart and Han could not disrupt both. But I don't remember how I did it. I did consider trying to squeeze 8 cats onto the board, but that didn't seem to be easy either. The board wasn't that big. 

The Thoughts

This is a cute little abstract game. It's a decent filler. I am absolutely tickled by the premise of cats pushing things off tables. The simplicity of the game is welcoming. You will be able to get almost anyone to be willing to give it a go.