Alcatraz (1999)

Overview

Players try to escape from the prison island Alcatraz in this quite abstract game. Board resembles a chess board, it's a 9x9 grid where players must move their pieces from one end to the other. Each piece can move horizontally or vertically as many spaces as the player wishes, but there are few complications: the guards. Each row has a guard. Whenever a piece moves to a row, the guard on that row moves as many spaces towards the piece as the piece moved (if you move three rows up, the guard on that row moves three spaces towards you). If the guard catches you, the move is illegal. Of course, it's legal to make the guards catch other players' pieces... The first player to have three of their four pieces escape wins.

Alcatraz is fun, quick game and a nice brain-teaser, especially with more than two players when the board gets quite crowded.