09 · playtest evidence
A player circled one tile. It changed the AI program.
Why readable game records and public tactical receipts became research infrastructure.
OverGrid / AI Field Notes
Two ways to read the board.
Choose a behind-the-scenes account of the game AI, or a player-facing strategy story drawn from the same concrete problems.
5 notes for Playtests.
Behind the AI
For game makers: engineering, evaluation, tooling, and failed experiments.
Open →
10 · candidate supply
The candidate generator is part of the AI.
Petra’s suspected missed height capture revealed why a good evaluator cannot rescue a move that never enters its menu.
13 · human loop
Autoresearch did not make the breakthrough. Playtests gave it something real to optimize.
How OverGrid playtests made deterministic AI research more useful.
16 · table talk
A good taunt needs the whole table.
Why game AI commentary needs the shared match situation—not hidden information, and not just the bot’s own score delta.
At the Table
For players: transferable OverGrid decisions, routes, pressure, and counterplay.
17 · asymmetric Bean
Bean’s fork: two threats, one exit.
A player’s guide to building asymmetric OverGrid threats that survive the opponent’s best cut.