Customer Reviews

Connection Games: Variations on a Theme

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book defines a connection game and proceeds to analyze them. About half the book is a catalog of all the connection games that have been invented, most in the past 20 years. I had no idea there were so many. This book will give you a taste of all these games and how they are "connected". It also presents ways of analyzing connection games, and has some tips on playing. Still, this is not a book that will tell you how to win at Hex, I think the author has another book for this.

My big gripe was that all of the page numbers in this book in the Table of Contents and the Indexes (there are several) are off by 13. My book came with a short note on a separate piece of paper noting this error. I found it frustrating looking things up in the indexes, although you soon become pretty good at converting. For a fairly expensive book, this is rather sloppy publishing, and should have been caught.

This book describes a lot of connection games.
Every game is studied using the primitive map of shannon game.

There is a deep description of principal games, like hex, shannon game, Y, trax etc. and a brief descrpition of a lot of other games, all based on the objective of connecting different sides of the board. Some games are invented by the author.

A pleasing book, even if some game has a too short description.

Very strong and interesting book about Connection Games. Huge amount of Games inside with good illustrations and page design. Good print quality. There is no programming samples in this book but it can be very helpful for any game designer/programmer.

Connection games are a genre of board games that generally consist of connecting adjacent squares (or hexagons, octagons, circles) together in some manner so as to meet some definition like a line across the board or enclosing an area.

The book is organized into three main parts and a set of appendicies.

Part I covers introductory material including a genral definition of connection, and a breakdown of games into several different groups.

Part II provides a catalogue of a surprisingly large number of currently known connection games.

Part III summarizes the books conclusions and gives some speculative aspects of connection games using the definition of a new game to illustrate critical points.

The appendicies give a further understanding of selected games through a slightly more theoretical approach.