Clairvoyance

[YoyomaBones]

I've recently started playing this great little asynchronous 2-player board game (with cute robots!):

http://www.gameofclairvoyance.com/

I think it's probably quite similar to (but simpler than) Frozen Synapse, although I never played that much at all.

I'm enjoying this game a lot, and it would be great to get some more people into the game. $5 for beta access, which I've found to be extremely stable, and all future updates included.

My username is YoyomaBones. Hope to see many new players soon!

[TychoCelchuuu]

Wow, that looks really interesting. I haven't heard of it before and I love everything from how adorable it looks to the asynchronicity.

I of course haven't played it so I shouldn't be judging but just from the look of it I think I might prefer Frozen Synapse. Paradoxically I think I would prefer Frozen Synapse because of its complexity, which makes the game simpler - by this I mean that you have so many options at any given moment in Frozen Synapse that it's almost impossible to overthink things - there are a zillion levels of mind games and complex strategies and so on, but there are so many unknowns that you can play like I do and not worry about perfection. I prefer to do my Frozen Synapse turns fairly quickly compared to some people - I don't plan out intricate turns for my enemy and simulate everything down to millisecond perfection based on what I think they'll do. I can be sloppy like this because the option space is so wide open that I'm not crippled by leaving some of the possibilities on the table, unconsidered.

Meanwhile in something like Clairvoyance (or another game I suck at, chess) the possibility space for an upcoming move is greatly narrowed, and because of this I can't get away with sloppiness. If I don't do due diligence in Clairvoyance it looks like I can get burned by some sort of possibility I had overlooked. Obviously this can happen in Frozen Synapse too, but since things are so wide open it's not like your opponent can, via intelligence or trial and error or luck, end up with the perfect execution of some strategy that just creams you - this can happen, but only if things go terribly wrong, because you have so many options that chances are your plan doesn't get you magically creamed unless you're just bad at the game.

When I see Clairvoyance's tight little grid and short list of possible commands, my brain starts to say "oh man, you really need to think about whether someone moves to THAT grid space or THAT grid space..." and so on. Overload! I'm bad at that sort of thing. Well, I'm not awful, but again I prefer the more open Frozen Synapse style which doesn't make me feel like I need to evaluate everything. And you need to think further ahead because robots ride other robots, have very regimented and discrete movement possibilities, etc.

So, to make a long story short, I don't have much money and I don't think I'll spend $5 on Clairvoyance, but I'll definitely keep a very watchful eye on it. Thanks for posting about it!

[YoyomaBones]

You're right about the chance of getting unexpectedly destroyed for overlooking some possibility -- this was happening a lot to me at the start but is happening less and less as I get more experience with the game. But even when this happens there's usually some possibility for a comeback. It's really rewarding when you are able to successfully predict an opponent's moves so that they move into the path of laser fire. I've had some success playing defensively at the start, noting which of their pieces my opponent is focusing on moving, and rushing across the map with one of my pieces to take out their robot they'd overlooked.

What you've said makes me think I should put some time into Frozen Synapse, especially given how much I'm enjoying Clairvoyance.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I have no doubt I could get better at it over time and so on, but when the possibility space is a bit more limited by a discrete grid, a limited number of robot commands, and so on, it makes it that much more likely that my opponent is the kind of person who is going to play out the 50 most likely scenarios in their head and fine tune their turn until it's perfect, just because a lot of people who like these kinds of games are like that, because of their personality or because they've gotten good at the game and realize that this is the way to win. I'm more impatient and prefer to be more sloppy - this works better in something like Frozen Synapse, where I have more room for improvisation because my opponent can't narrow the possibility space down to my 20 most likely moves and work out a counter to them. Having continuous variables to fiddle infinitely with in Frozen Synapse introduces a lot of slack into the system, even into a system as airtight as Frozen Synapse's "one shot, one kill, no randomization" universe. Those fiddly gaps between the grid don't exist in Clairvoyance, and it's those fiddly gaps that allow me to be a halfway decent Frozen Synapse player without having to spend a lot of time or be smart.

Also Frozen Synapse added timed turns in the last patch/expansion which fits my play style much more closely. I love those and I'm not sure Clairvoyance has them at all. I greatly prefer the time pressure because that removes the possibility entirely that my opponent will spend 20 minutes working out the various things I might do and devising the perfect response. You've only got a minute now! See if you can think as fast and as loose as me! And unlike chess, Frozen Synapse has randomized maps and unit combinations, so speed benefits not the people who have played a lot and memorized openings and so on, but solely those (like me) who prefer to think on the fly (not that speed chess doesn't reward thinking on the fly too).

[elmuerte]

Sounds a bit like RoboRally. Played that yesterday with some friends