Long story short

Once upon a time there was a software author who liked abstract board games like chess and programing challenges like writing an agent – a software – to play against. Once that the software agents, or engines, playing chess became stronger than the strongest human player on the planet, however, playing against them became quite boring since human players started losing regularly against agents without even fully understanding why.

It was then that, at some point and because of many other concomitant factors which create destiny, that our author delved into game design to have fun but also with a purpose: design a game that would make it difficult for agents to beat human regularly.

After a while, Struckle was born.

The software, who had been a friend of the author for a very long time and that, for a twist of fate, had turned into the enemy winning every single chess game, restored their relationship by providing the means to playtest the game mechanics and, eventually, for producing agents that would not win every single game but, on the contrary, could lose to cunning humans.

Perhaps one day there will be a Struckle engine capable of beating human players each and every time, but until then the author remains confident that the game was indeed designed to avoid such dreadful ending.

Beyond the story

My identity as game designer leans strongly on my software developer background which helped immensely in the creation of Struckle as-is.

I find it very useful to be able to create agents that can validate the mechanics of the game and help in making it balanced even when it might not appear so to human intuition. To be clear, if it is not obvious already, the software doesn’t make the rules but can validate their logic and measure the overall balance, or unbalance, that they produce.

The game example in the video below was created by capturing the board of the software I produced to test, design, and play Struckle by myself against three agents playing the remaining sides. In the example below, however, I let them play each of the four sides.

The software is not available publicly but I can provide a copy of it to perspective publishers that might be interested in adding Struckle to their portfolio, so do not hesitate to contact me if that is your case.

Contact the author

I find it extremely funny to conjugate software production with game design and I would be pleased to collaborate to any gaming-related project that might be helped by my skills and experience.

For any comments, suggestions, or inquiries, I warmly invite you to reach out via email at:

Your feedback is invaluable in shaping the future of Struckle. Let the fun continue, and happy gaming!