Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set

Last updated

Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set is a 1999 board game published by Looney Labs.

Contents

Gameplay

Icehouse, The Martian Chess Set is a set of playing pieces that can be utilized in abstract strategy games. [1]

Reception

The reviewer from the online second volume of Pyramid stated that "Each of these games capitalizes on the unique nature of the Icehouse playing pieces to create unique and clever board games." [1]

Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set won the Origins Awards in the category "Best Abstract Board Game 2000". [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Jackson Games</span> American game publishing company

Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strategy game</span> Type of game

A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree-style thinking, and typically very high situational awareness.

The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which computer programs compete against each other. For many games, the Computer Olympiads are an opportunity to claim the "world's best computer player" title. First contested in 1989, the majority of the games are board games but other games such as bridge take place as well. In 2010, several puzzles were included in the competition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Icehouse pieces</span> Pyramid shaped gaming pieces

Icehouse pieces, or Icehouse Pyramids, Treehouse pieces, Treehouse Pyramids and officially Looney Pyramids, are nestable and stackable pyramid-shaped gaming pieces and a game system. The game system was invented by Andrew Looney and John Cooper in 1987, originally for use in the game of Icehouse.

Andrew J. Looney is a game designer and computer programmer. He is also a photographer, a cartoonist, a video-blogger, and a marijuana-legalization advocate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rithmomachia</span> Early European mathematical board game

Rithmomachia is an early European mathematical board game. Its earliest known description dates from the eleventh century. The name comes loosely from Greek and means "The Battle of the Numbers." The game is somewhat like chess except that most methods of capture depend on the numbers inscribed on each piece.

<i>Zendo</i> (game)

Zendo is a game of inductive logic designed by Kory Heath in which one player creates a rule for structures ("koans") to follow, and the other players try to discover it by building and studying various koans which follow or break the rule. The first student to correctly state the rule wins.

Icehouse or ice house may refer to:

Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999. It is played with Icehouse pyramids on a chessboard. To play with a number of players other than two or four, a non-Euclidean surface can be tiled to produce a board of the required size, allowing up to six players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract strategy game</span> Mental skill based games

Abstract strategy games in contrast to strategy games in general usually have no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice, and all players have perfect information about the game. For example, Go is a pure abstract strategy game since it fulfills all three criteria; chess and related games are nearly so but feature a recognizable theme of ancient warfare; and Stratego is borderline since it is deterministic, loosely based on 19th-century Napoleonic warfare, and features concealed information.

Looney Labs, Inc. is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, United States. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney, and is best known for creating the Fluxx line of card games. The company has three U.S. patents and eight Origins Awards.

Brawl is a real-time card game designed by James Ernest and released in 1999 by Cheapass Games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jetan</span>

Jetan, also known as Martian chess, is a chess variant first published in 1922. It was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a game played on Barsoom, his fictional version of Mars. The game was introduced in The Chessmen of Mars, the fifth book in the Barsoom series. Its rules are described in Chapter 2 and in the Appendix of the book, with an actual game partly described in Chapter 17.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Treehouse (game)</span> Board game

Treehouse is a game in which players try to get their configuration of Icehouse pieces to match the central configuration, shared by all players. The rolling of the special "Treehouse Die" tells the player what kind of move to make to change his own or the central configuration, and then he does so to best move towards the goal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bosworth (game)</span>

Bosworth is a four-handed chess variant manufactured by Out of the Box Publishing company since 1998. It is played on 6x6 board and uses 4 sets of standard chess pieces.

This glossary of board games explains commonly used terms in board games, in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games; for terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess; for terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Duke (board game)</span> Abstract strategy board game

The Duke is a two-player abstract strategy board game played on a square-tiled gameboard, with 36 squares arranged in a 6×6 grid. The game has been compared to chess and chess variants, while retaining notable differences in unit movement and overall gameplay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chess variant</span> Games related to, derived from or inspired by chess

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from, or inspired by chess. Such variants can differ from chess in many different ways.

References

  1. 1 2 "Pyramid: Pyramid Pick: Icehouse, The Martian Chess Set". www.sjgames.com.
  2. "Origins Award Winners (2000)". Academy of Adventure Gaming, Arts & Designs. Archived from the original on November 5, 2007.