Board Game Arena

Hello everyone,

Lifeline, a 2-player abstract game that manages to combine the best aspects of connection, racing, and territory games into a Go-like package, is now in Beta.

If that sounds like your kind of game, please give it a try! Have fun!

Game Link: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=lifeline
BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/358196/lifeline

Congrats

Rules wrote: A group is dead if there is no path of connected empty cells between that group and any other of its color.

What the is that meant to mean?
You mean any other group of its colour (only learnt this from the video)

You need a "Win" heading in the rules.

Rules wrote: you will always have a placement available unless you have no groups on the board

Where does it say you can't place a stone if you don't have groups on the board? is that self-referencing?
It just says you need to place a stone in an empty cell...
If you already have no groups on the board, then haven't you already lost?

I kindly suggest you should re-write the rules. Try to avoid double negatives.


OK, so after watching the video (still not played a game yet). What I can understand:

You don't define what a 'path' is in the written rules. My preference would be to define the term 'empty path' to be clear. (rather than a path of stones which would be the default thinking).

Placement:
When you place a stone, you can place it anywhere and either add to an existing group or create a new single stone group. If you create a new single stone group then it must be connected via an empty path to another group of your colour.

Win:
You win if at any time your opponent has no stones on the board.
This happens when you remove all your opponents empty paths between their groups.

The setup is to initially create 2 different groups with an empty path between them.

I cannot rewrite the rules, because it's not my game to rewrite. But I can point out that the video you're referencing has an out dated explanation of the rules, and it's not quite accurate. I was afraid it might cause some confusion when I saw it linked, and I'm afraid that it has.

A couple of points, as comments on your post:

You are correct, a group is dead when you cannot trace a path over empty hexes to another group of the same color as it. Groups cannot grant life to themselves.

The statement about not being able to place a stone unless you have a group on the board has to do with the condition that you cannot make a play without affecting the board. It's impossible to affect the board with a single placement absent any other stones. This may be difficult to see at first, and I'd have preferred it to have been spelled out more robustly. In fact, it's impossible to place inside territory that's been closed off by enemy stones, because it would not affect the board.

Also, upon reflection, you may find that the rules do not contain a double negative.

The win condition is actually "a player loses when they cannot make a legal move". But I agree that could be made more clear in the wiki summary.

One last note, you're more than welcome to edit the wiki pages or post links to better videos. The metadata attached to games is owned by the community, and everyone is able to make edits, as long as they're not being malicious.

It's the same text as the BGG page.

Without the video I would have no idea what was going on. The video at least makes the deliberate point about 'empty paths'.

But so does the rule summary:

A group is dead if there is no path of connected empty cells between that group and any other of its color.

Can you help me understand how that could he made clearer?

It's quite a difficult sentence and a lot to digest.

A group is dead if there is no path of connected empty cells between that group and any other group of its colour.

There is no harm in over specifying for clarity. My first thought after reading the sentence was.. 'any other what?'
You predefine 'group' so it makes that sentence easier to understand, I would suggest you do the same with 'path of connected empty cells'.

In the previous post, I came up with some beginner friendly sentences.

Suggestions about the game implementation.

The names could be in Black & White.
When you see your name in Black, but you're actually playing white is confusing. The problem is worse in turn-based games.

When the stone hovers it could be a transparent stone in your colour.