00 · start here
Start here: what OverGrid asks an AI to see.
A short guide to the game, its scoring, and why one three-piece turn can create a serious search problem.
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.
10 notes for Search.
Behind the AI
For game makers: engineering, evaluation, tooling, and failed experiments.
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01 · search foundation
A small board can still have an enormous turn.
Why OverGrid’s first AI problem was not “which move is best?” but “which legal moves deserve a fair look?”
02 · reply search
More lookahead made the AI worse—until we gave it a smaller job.
The first selective-reply experiments taught OverGrid not to turn every tactical question into a minimax sermon.
09 · playtest evidence
A player circled one tile. It changed the AI program.
Why readable game records and public tactical receipts became research infrastructure.
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.
11 · responsive compute
The best move may be outside the search budget
Petra’s missed height tile exposed the real bounded-search problem: evaluating a move is useless if the candidate generator never offers it.
14 · adaptive Ender
Ender had an opponent model. It just never got to use it.
An honest account of a non-promotion, an adaptive search breakthrough, and the difference between activation and strength.
At the Table
For players: transferable OverGrid decisions, routes, pressure, and counterplay.
15 · current checkpoint
The best move is the move you can prove.
A player’s guide to choosing between reply-backed calculation and a small, visible board proof.
player guide · orientation
Rotate the whole hand, not just the piece you like.
A practical way to escape the first attractive OverGrid construction and find routes hidden by orientation.
player guide · counterplay
The reply is part of the move.
A short OverGrid calculation routine for choosing between two constructions that both look good.