Take-Back-Toe (2011)

Overview

Take-Back-Toe is a short abstract strategy game for two players. Starting with a central row of ten chips on four adjacent spaces, players try to move chips to create three stacks of equal height on their side of the board.

On a turn, a player rolls a six-sided die, then moves a stack of exactly that many chips to an orthogonally adjacent space on the 3x4 game board. A player cannot reverse the opponent's previous move.

For a longer challenge, players can complete a set number of games, alternating the start player and scoring as many points for a victory as the height of the winning stacks. The player with the highest cumulative score wins.

The game was the winner of the Thousand Year Game Design Challenge, a 2011 contest to design a game that might still be played a thousand years hence.