Selfo is a class of abstract strategy
board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a comp ...
s subscribed to the category of
connection game
A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more endpoints, completing a closed loop, or connecting all ...
s. It was designed by Prof.
Francisco Vico and its name derives from the phenomenon of
self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffi ...
(increase in a system's organization without external guidance), since during the game the sets of pieces might flow in a coordinated way as they step on the board.
Description
Despite its very simple definition (“group your set of pieces by moving in turns to adjacent cells”) complex self-organization processes take place during the game under concrete circumstances (a balanced distribution of pieces and players with a similar level of expertise), and is the result of abrupt and deep changes in the
tactics. The particular values given to the traditional parameters that define a game (i.e. board tiling, size and initial position, or number of pieces and players) are not so relevant, and many variants have been found to meet the conditions for self-organization. The ''Selfo'' class of
connection game
A connection game is a type of abstract strategy game in which players attempt to complete a specific type of connection with their pieces. This could involve forming a path between two or more endpoints, completing a closed loop, or connecting all ...
is defined, instead, by the interrelations among parameters in order to favor
self-organization
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when suffi ...
. Subclasses of Selfo derive upon the move length (number of movements of a piece in a single turn to adjacent empty cells). In a generic ''Selfo''-''n'' game, a player can move one piece from 0 (passing on the turn) to ''n'' consecutive steps.
An
algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...
has been designed to play Selfo at a human level, and an implementation of it is publicly accessible.
[{{cite web , url= http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi?do=show;id=1772, title= Selfo, date= 2009-11-28, website= , publisher= Zillions Development Corporation, accessdate=2014-06-27]
References
Board games
Abstract strategy games
Connection games