# boardgame-research [![Contributions Welcome](https://img.shields.io/badge/Contributions-welcome-brightgreen.svg)](https://github.com/captn3m0/boardgame-research/issues/new/choose) This is a list of boardgame research. They are primarily related to "solving/playing/learning" games (by various different approaches), or occasionaly about designing or meta-aspects of the game. This doesn't cover all aspects of each game (notably missing social-science stuff), but should be of interest to anyone interested in boardgames and their optimal play. While there is a ton of easily accessible research on games like Chess and Go, finding prior work on more contemporary games can be a bit hard. This list focuses on the latter. If you are interested in well-researched games like Chess, Go, Hex, take a look at the [Chess programming wiki](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Games) instead. The list also covers some computer-games that fall under similar themes. Exported versions are available in the following formats: - [Zotero RDF](boardgame-research.rdf) - [BibTeX](boardgame-research.bib) Watch the repository to get the latest updates for now. If you aren't able to access any paper on this list, please [try using Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub) or [reach out to me](https://captnemo.in/contact/). **Table of Contents** *generated with [DocToc](https://github.com/thlorenz/doctoc)* - [Azul](#azul) - [Blokus](#blokus) - [Carcassonne](#carcassonne) - [Diplomacy](#diplomacy) - [Dixit](#dixit) - [Dominion](#dominion) - [Hanabi](#hanabi) - [Hive](#hive) - [Jenga](#jenga) - [Kingdomino](#kingdomino) - [Lost Cities](#lost-cities) - [Mafia](#mafia) - [Magic: the Gathering](#magic-the-gathering) - [Modern Art: The card game](#modern-art-the-card-game) - [Monopoly](#monopoly) - [Monopoly Deal](#monopoly-deal) - [Nmbr9](#nmbr9) - [Pandemic](#pandemic) - [Patchwork](#patchwork) - [Pentago](#pentago) - [Quixo](#quixo) - [Race for the Galaxy](#race-for-the-galaxy) - [The Resistance: Avalon](#the-resistance-avalon) - [Risk](#risk) - [Santorini](#santorini) - [Scotland Yard](#scotland-yard) - [Secret Hitler](#secret-hitler) - [Set](#set) - [Settlers of Catan](#settlers-of-catan) - [Shobu](#shobu) - [Terra Mystica](#terra-mystica) - [Tetris Link](#tetris-link) - [Ticket to Ride](#ticket-to-ride) - [Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe](#ultimate-tic-tac-toe) - [Uno](#uno) - [Yahtzee](#yahtzee) - [Mobile Games](#mobile-games) - [2048](#2048) - [Game Design](#game-design) - [Accessibility](#accessibility) - [Frameworks/Toolkits](#frameworkstoolkits) # Azul - [A summary of a dissertation on Azul](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/hxodaf/update_i_wrote_my_dissertation_on_azul/) (unpublished) - [Ceramic: A research environment based on the multi-player strategic board game Azul](https://ipsj.ixsq.nii.ac.jp/ej/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=207669&item_no=1&attribute_id=1&file_no=1) [[GitHub](https://github.com/Swynfel/ceramic)] # Blokus - [Blokus Game Solver](https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cpesp/290/) - [FPGA Blokus Duo Solver using a massively parallel architecture](https://doi.org/10.1109/FPT.2013.6718426) - [Blokus Duo game on FPGA](https://doi.org/10.1109/CADS.2013.6714256) # Carcassonne - [Playing Carcassonne with Monte Carlo Tree Search](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12974) # Diplomacy - [Human-Level Performance in No-Press Diplomacy via Equilibrium Search](https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.02923) - [Learning to Play No-Press Diplomacy with Best Response Policy Iteration ](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.04635) - [No Press Diplomacy: Modeling Multi-Agent Gameplay ](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02128) - [Agent Madoff: A Heuristic-Based Negotiation Agent For The Diplomacy Strategy Game ](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.06996) # Dixit - [Creative Captioning: An AI Grand Challenge Based on the Dixit Board Game](https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.00048) - [Dixit: Interactive Visual Storytelling via Term Manipulation](https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.02230) # Dominion There is a [simulator](https://dominionsimulator.wordpress.com/f-a-q/) and the code behind [the Dominion server running councilroom.com](https://github.com/mikemccllstr/dominionstats/) is available. councilroom has the [best and worst openings](http://councilroom.com/openings), [optimal card ratios](http://councilroom.com/optimal_card_ratios), [Card winning stats](http://councilroom.com/supply_win) and lots of other empirical research. The [Dominion Strategy Forum](http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php) is another good general resource. - [Clustering Player Strategies from Variable-Length Game Logs in Dominion](https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.11273) # Hanabi - [Improving Policies via Search in Cooperative Partially Observable Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.02318) (FB) [[code](https://github.com/facebookresearch/Hanabi_SPARTA)] - Current best result. - [Re-determinizing MCTS in Hanabi](https://ieee-cog.org/2020/papers2019/paper_17.pdf) - [Hanabi is NP-hard, Even for Cheaters who Look at Their Cards](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.01911) - [Evolving Agents for the Hanabi 2018 CIG Competition](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8490449) - [Aspects of the Cooperative Card Game Hanabi](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-67468-1_7) - [How to Make the Perfect Fireworks Display: Two Strategies for Hanabi](https://doi.org/10.4169/math.mag.88.5.323) - [Playing Hanabi Near-Optimally](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71649-7_5) - [Evaluating and modelling Hanabi-playing agents](https://doi.org/10.1109/CEC.2017.7969465) - [An intentional AI for hanabi](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8080417) - [The Hanabi challenge: A new frontier for AI research](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2019.103216) [[arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.00506)]] (DeepMind) - [Solving Hanabi: Estimating Hands by Opponent's Actions in Cooperative Game with Incomplete Information](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/WS/AAAIW15/paper/view/10167/10193) - [A Browser-based Interface for the Exploration and Evaluation of Hanabi AIs](http://fdg2017.org/papers/FDG2017_demo_Hanabi.pdf) - [I see what you see: Integrating eye tracking into Hanabi playing agents](http://www.exag.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AIIDE-18_Upload_112.pdf) - [The 2018 Hanabi competition](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2019.8848008) - [Diverse Agents for Ad-Hoc Cooperation in Hanabi](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2019.8847944) [[arXiv](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13710v2.pdf)] - [State of the art Hanabi bots + simulation framework in rust](https://github.com/WuTheFWasThat/hanabi.rs) - [A strategy simulator for the well-known cooperative card game Hanabi](https://github.com/rjtobin/HanSim) - [A framework for writing bots that play Hanabi](https://github.com/Quuxplusone/Hanabi) - [Evaluating the Rainbow DQN Agent in Hanabi with Unseen Partners](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13291) - [Operationalizing Intentionality to Play Hanabi with Human Players](https://doi.org/10.1109/TG.2020.3009359) - [Behavioral Evaluation of Hanabi Rainbow DQN Agents and Rule-Based Agents](https://ojs.aaai.org//index.php/AIIDE/article/view/7404) [[pdf](https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AIIDE/article/view/7404/7333)] - [Playing mini-Hanabi card game with Q-learning](http://id.nii.ac.jp/1001/00205046/) - [Generating and Adapting to Diverse Ad-Hoc Cooperation Agents in Hanabi](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13710) - [Hanabi Open Agend Dataset](https://github.com/aronsar/hoad) - [[ACM](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3461017.3461244)] # Hive - [On the complexity of Hive](https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/396955) # Jenga - [Maximum genus of the Jenga like configurations](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.01503) - [Jidoukan Jenga: Teaching English through remixing games and game rules](https://www.llpjournal.org/2020/04/13/jidokan-jenga.html) # Kingdomino - [Monte Carlo Methods for the Game Kingdomino](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2018.8490419) [[arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04458)] - [NP-completeness of the game Kingdomino](https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.02849) # Lost Cities - [Applying Neural Networks and Genetic Programming to the Game Lost Cities](http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/79080) # Mafia - [A mathematical model of the Mafia game](https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1031) - [Automatic Long-Term Deception Detection in Group Interaction Videos](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08617) - [Human-Side Strategies in the Werewolf Game Against the Stealth Werewolf Strategy](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-50935-8_9) - [A Theoretical Study of Mafia Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.0071) # Magic: the Gathering - [Magic: the Gathering is as Hard as Arithmetic](https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.05119) - [Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828) - [Neural Networks Models for Analyzing Magic: the Gathering Cards](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-04179-3_20) [[arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.03744)] - [The Complexity of Deciding Legality of a Single Step of Magic: the Gathering](https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3029568/1/magic.pdf) - [Ensemble Determinization in Monte Carlo Tree Search for the Imperfect Information Card Game Magic: The Gathering](https://doi.org/10.1109/TCIAIG.2012.2204883) - [Magic: The Gathering in Common Lisp](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5fc8/58802f19504ea950e20e31526dc2269b43d8.pdf) [[source](https://github.com/jeffythedragonslayer/maglisp)] - [Deck Costruction Strategies for Magic: the Gathering](https://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/congress/article/viewFile/141/141) - [Deckbuilding in Magic: The Gathering Using a Genetic Algorithm](http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2462429) - [Mathematical programming and Magic: The Gathering®](https://commons.lib.niu.edu/handle/10843/19194) - [Optimal Card-Collecting Strategies for Magic: The Gathering](https://doi.org/10.1080/07468342.2000.11974103) - [Monte Carlo search applied to card selection in Magic: The Gathering](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2009.5286501) - [Magic: The Gathering Deck Performance Prediction](http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2012/HauPlotkinTran-MagicTheGatheringDeckPerformancePrediction.pdf) # Modern Art: The card game - [A constraint programming based solver for Modern Art](https://github.com/captn3m0/modernart) # Monopoly - [Learning Monopoly Gameplay: A Hybrid Model-Free Deep Reinforcement Learning and Imitation Learning Approach](https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00683) - [Negotiation strategy of agents in the MONOPOLY game](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1013210) - [Generating interesting Monopoly boards from open data](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6374168) - [Estimating the probability that the game of Monopoly never ends](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5429349) - [Learning to play Monopoly:A Reinforcement Learning approach](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anestis_Fachantidis/publication/289403522_Learning_to_play_monopoly_A_Reinforcement_learning_approach/links/59dd1f3e458515f6efef1904/Learning-to-play-monopoly-A-Reinforcement-learning-approach.pdf) - [Monopoly as a Markov Process](https://doi.org/10.1080/0025570X.1972.11976187) - [Learning to Play Monopoly withMonte Carlo Tree Search](https://project-archive.inf.ed.ac.uk/ug4/20181042/ug4_proj.pdf) - [Monopoly Using Reinforcement Learning ](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8929523) - [A Markovian Exploration of Monopoly](https://pi4.math.illinois.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gartland-Burson-Ferguson-Markovopoly.pdf) - [What's the best Monopoly strategy](https://publications.lakeforest.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1277&context=gss) # Monopoly Deal - [Implementation of AI Player on "Monopoly Deal"](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46742-8_11) # Nmbr9 - [Nmbr9 as a Constraint Programming Challenge](https://zayenz.se/blog/post/nmbr9-cp2019-abstract/) # Pandemic - [NP-Completeness of Pandemic](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ipsjjip/20/3/20_723/_article) # Patchwork - [State Representation and Polyomino Placement for the Game Patchwork](https://zayenz.se/blog/post/patchwork-modref2019-paper/) # Pentago - [On Solving Pentago](http://www.ke.tu-darmstadt.de/lehre/arbeiten/bachelor/2011/Buescher_Niklas.pdf) # Quixo - [Quixo Is Solved](https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.15895) - [QUIXO is EXPTIME-complete](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2020.105995) # Race for the Galaxy - [SCOUT: A Case-Based Reasoning Agent for Playing Race for the Galaxy](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61030-6_27) # The Resistance: Avalon - [Finding Friend and Foe in Multi-Agent Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02330) # Risk - [Mini-Risk: Strategies for a Simplified Board Game](https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.1990.2) - [A Multi-Agent System for playing the board game Risk](https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A831093&dswid=-4740) - [Learning the risk board game with classifier systems](https://doi.org/10.1145/508791.508904) - [Markov Chains and the RISK Board Game](https://doi.org/10.1080/0025570X.1997.11996573) - [Markov Chains for the RISK Board Game Revisited](https://doi.org/10.1080/0025570X.2003.11953165) - [RISK Board Game ‐ Battle Outcome Analysis](http://www.c4i.gr/xgeorgio/docs/RISK-board-game%20_rev-3.pdf) - [Planning an endgame move set for the game RISK](https://doi.org/10.1109/TEVC.2005.856211) - [RISKy Business: An In-Depth Look at the Game RISK](https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rhumj/vol3/iss2/3/) - [An Intelligent Artificial Player for the Game of Risk](http://www.ke.tu-darmstadt.de/lehre/archiv/ss04/oberseminar/folien/Wolf_Michael-Slides.pdf) - [Monte Carlo Tree Search for Risk](https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Meeting%20Proceedings/STO-MP-SAS-OCS-ORA-2020/MP-SAS-OCS-ORA-2020-WCM-01.pdf) [[Presentation](https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/STO%20Meeting%20Proceedings/STO-MP-SAS-OCS-ORA-2020/MP-SAS-OCS-ORA-2020-WCM-01P.pdf)] # Santorini - [A Mathematical Analysis of the Game of Santorini](https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/8917/) # Scotland Yard - [The complexity of Scotland Yard](http://www.illc.uva.nl/Research/Publications/Reports/PP-2006-18.text.pdf) # Secret Hitler - [Competing in a Complex Hidden Role Game with Information Set Monte Carlo Tree Search](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07156) # Set Set has a long history of mathematical research, so this list isn't exhaustive. - [Game, Set, Math](https://doi.org/10.4169/math.mag.85.2.083) - [The Joy of SET](https://doi.org/10.1080/00029890.2018.1412661) # Settlers of Catan - [The effectiveness of persuasion in The Settlers of Catan ](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2014.6932861) - [Avoiding Revenge Using Optimal Opponent Ranking Strategy in the Board Game Catan ](https://doi.org/10.4018/IJGCMS.2018040103) - [Game strategies for The Settlers of Catan](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2014.6932884) - [Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Settlers of Catan](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12993-3_3) - [Settlers of Catan bot trained using reinforcement learning (MATLAB).](https://jonzia.github.io/Catan/) - [Trading in a multiplayer board game: Towards an analysis of non-cooperative dialogue](https://escholarship.org/content/qt9zt506xx/qt9zt506xx.pdf) - [POMCP with Human Preferencesin Settlers of Catan](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AIIDE/AIIDE18/paper/viewFile/18091/17217) - [Reinforcement Learning of Strategies for Settlers of Catan](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.561.6293&rep=rep1&type=pdf) - [Deep Reinforcement Learning in Strategic Board GameEnvironments](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14174-5_16) [[pdf](https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02124411/document)] - [Monte Carlo Tree Search in a Modern Board Game Framework](https://project.dke.maastrichtuniversity.nl/games/files/bsc/Roelofs_Bsc-paper.pdf) - [The impact of loaded dice in Catan](https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-cheat-at-settlers-of-catan-by-loading-the-dice-and-prove-it-with-p-values.html) - [Playing Catan with Cross-dimensional Neural Network](https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.07079) - [Strategic Dialogue Management via Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.08099) # Shobu - [Shobu AI Playground](https://github.com/JayWalker512/Shobu) - [Shobu randomly played games dataset](https://www.kaggle.com/bsfoltz/shobu-randomly-played-games-104k) # Terra Mystica - [Using Tabu Search Algorithm for Map Generation in the Terra Mystica Tabletop Game](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.02716) # [Tetris Link](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/93185/tetris-link) - [A New Challenge: Approaching Tetris Link with AI](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00377) # Ticket to Ride - [Evolving maps and decks for ticket to ride](https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235813) - [Materials for Ticket to Ride Seattle and a framework for making more game boards](https://github.com/dovinmu/ttr_generator) - [The Difficulty of Learning Ticket to Ride](https://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~jsinapov/teaching/comp150_RL/reports/Nguyen_Dinjian_report.pdf) - [AI-based Playtesting of Contemporary Board Games](https://doi.org/10.1145/3102071.3102105) [[pdf](http://game.engineering.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ticket-ride-fdg2017-camera-ready.pdf)] [[presentation](https://www.rtealwitter.com/slides/2020-JMM.pdf)] # Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe - [At Most 43 Moves, At Least 29: Optimal Strategies and Bounds for Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.02353) # Uno - [The complexity of UNO](https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.2851) - [UNO Is Hard, Even for a Single Player](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13122-6_15) # Yahtzee - [Optimal Solitaire Yahtzee Strategies](http://www.yahtzee.org.uk/optimal_yahtzee_TV.pdf) - [Nearly Optimal Computer Play in Multi-player Yahtzee](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17928-0_23) - [Computer Strategies for Solitaire Yahtzee](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2007.368089) - [An optimal strategy for Yahtzee](http://www.cs.loyola.edu/~jglenn/research/optimal_yahtzee.pdf) - [Yahtzee: a Large Stochastic Environment for RL Benchmarks](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f5c2/e9c9b17f584f060a73036109f697ac819a23.pdf) - [Modeling expert problem solving in a game of chance: a Yahtzee case study](https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0394.00160) - [Probabilites In Yahtzee](https://doi.org/10.5951/MT.75.9.0751) - [Optimal Yahtzee performance in multi-player games](https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:668705/FULLTEXT01.pdf) - [Defensive Yahtzee](https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:817838/FULLTEXT01.pdf) - [Using Deep Q-Learning to Compare Strategy Ladders of Yahtzee](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6bec/1c34c8ace65adc95d39cb0c0e589ae392678.pdf) - [How to Maximize Your Score in Solitaire Yahtzee](http://www-set.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/misc/yahtzee/yahtzee-report-unfinished.pdf) # Mobile Games - [Trainyard is NP-Hard](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00928) - [Threes!, Fives, 1024!, and 2048 are Hard](https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04274) ## 2048 - [Making Change in 2048](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07396) - [Analysis of the Game "2048" and its Generalization in Higher Dimensions](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07393) - [Temporal difference learning of N-tuple networks for the game 2048](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6932907) - [Multi-Stage Temporal Difference Learning for 2048-like Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07374) - [On the Complexity of Slide-and-Merge Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.03837) - [2048 is (PSPACE) Hard, but Sometimes Eas](https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.6315) - [Systematic Selection of N-Tuple Networks for 2048](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50935-8_8) - [Systematic selection of N-tuple networks with consideration of interinfluence for game 2048](https://doi.org/10.1109/TAAI.2016.7880154) - [2048 Without New Tiles Is Still Hard](https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/5885/) - [An investigation into 2048 AI strategies](https://doi.org/10.1109/CIG.2014.6932920) # Game Design - [MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research ](https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Workshops/2004/WS-04-04/WS04-04-001.pdf) - [Exploring Anonymity in Cooperative Board Games](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.225.5554&rep=rep1&type=pdf) ## Accessibility - [Eighteen Months of Meeple Like Us: An Exploration into the State of Board Game Accessibility](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0056-9) - [Meeple Centred Design: A Heuristic Toolkit for Evaluating the Accessibility of Tabletop Games](https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-018-0057-8) # Frameworks/Toolkits - [RLCard: A Toolkit for Reinforcement Learning in Card Games](https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.04376) - [GTSA: Game Tree Search Algorithms](https://github.com/AdamStelmaszczyk/gtsa) - [Design and Implementation of TAG: A Tabletop Games Framework](https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12065) [[GitHub](https://github.com/GAIGResearch/TabletopGames)] - [TAG: Tabletop Games Framework](https://github.com/GAIGResearch/TabletopGames)