Trike

Trike is a combinatorial abstract strategy game for two players. The game revolves around setting traps, dismantling opponent traps, and maneuvering a shared piece into your own trap to win.

Trike has high clarity due to the simple movement protocol, singular win condition, low branching factor, and easy-to-read board state. However, Trike is dramatic because it offers players many chances to make fatal errors.

Rules: Play on an equilateral triangular hexagon-tessellated grid. Use a neutral pawn and black/white checkers. Players take turns moving a neutral pawn around on the board (passing is not allowed). The neutral pawn can move any number of empty points, in any direction in a straight line, but cannot move onto, or jump over occupied points. When a player moves the pawn, first they place a checker of their own color, onto the destination point. Then they move the pawn on top of it. When the pawn is trapped, the game is over. At the end of the game, each player gets a point for each checker of their own color adjacent to, or underneath, the pawn. The person with the highest score wins.

Implement pie rule. This means, at the beginning of the game, the first player chooses a color and puts a checker on any point of the board, with the pawn on top of it. At this time only, the second player has a one-time chance to swap sides instead of making a regular move.

Trike is partisan, draw-less, finite, cycle-free, always decisive, scalable with board size, and balanced with the pie rule.

One note on gameplay: the score will always include one point for the last move, and one point for the second-to-last move. Therefore, who plays last has no bearing on who wins the game.