Category Archives: reviews

The Three Body Problem

Posted on by tjkopena

The Three Body Problem. Liu. High concept science fiction about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the consequences thereof.

Though massively hyped, this is a fairly bland novel. The first quarter or first third or so are interesting. From an American perspective it’s refreshing to have a story set in recent Chinese history, especially in the countryside, rather than modern-to-near-future urban cyberpunk, triads, and/or espionage. There is also a lot of nuance in that aspect, as the book is clearly critical of the Cultural Revolution and the Communist Party but also endorses basic tenets we would consider communist and even authoritarian. These sections of the book also have a number of potentially very interesting characters and relationships between them.

The later sections of the book though mostly shunt all that aside in favor of long expository monologues expounding on a combination of vaguely scientific ideas and the history of an alien race. Unfortunately we’re not given much reason to care about that race and the science-y mumbo jumbo is less than captivating. In some aspects the book reminds me of Andy Weir’s novels to date—The Martian, Project Hail Mary, Artemis—which range in that order from fine to meh to atrociously bad but all “feature” way too much made up technical greebling and science-y-ness. But even more so, The Three Body Problem feels like reading “golden age” science fiction from the ’40s & ’50s (roughly speaking), most of which is… not good. That literature similarly expends great time conducting lessons on various science concepts that are then stretched too far in application, almost always at the expense of character development. A lot of it also hinges on singular premises that ultimately just come across as silly. Specifically, The Three Body Problem feels very much like a Chinese version of Arthur C Clarke’s Childhood’s End, an ostensibly classic 1953 novel also about first contact that also has some interesting ideas but reads pretty flat and to my taste is overwhelmed by a mostly unnecessary but very goofy plot conceit.

All in all, I didn’t hate reading The Three Body Problem, but it’s definitely not on my recommended list and I’m not particularly motivated for the rest of the trilogy.

Quoridor

Posted on by tjkopena

Tom had been on me for years to give Quoridor a try and I finally did. I’m really surprised it’s apparently not some classic game from antiquity. The rules are so simple and yet the strategic complexity is so high.

You and your opponent(s) are each a single pawn on a 9×9 grid, starting from opposing edges. Your objective is simply to get to the other side. Each turn you can move one cell in a cardinal direction or place one of a limited number of walls two spaces long. Walls can never be placed to completely cut someone off from their goal edge. If another pawn is adjacent you can hop over them. That’s pretty much literally it.

But within that short list of rules is a ton of strategy and tension. A reflection of how good it is, Quoridor is completely abstract but for me strongly evokes a classic duel. It’s gunfighters sidestepping in the circle at Sad Hill Cemetery, wary of committing but also of being slow on the draw—felt in the cautious moves to the center or sides. It’s wuxia masters facing off in a courtyard, fighting an entire battle solely in their minds—felt in the mental attacks and blocks made in placing walls all around the board as the pawns sit idle and stare at each other.

Certainly not everybody’s kind of game, in large part because of that tension. Nor is it necessarily a game to play all the time forever, not least due to the abstraction. But Quoridor is a masterpiece of elegant game design.

Iwari

Posted on by tjkopena

Another new-to-me boardgame I played recently: Iwari.

Iwari is an abstract area control game by the designer of Coloretto, a longtime family fave, and you can feel echos of that in the design. A couple mechanics can be left out for initial games, making the whole thing quick to explain, just a couple minutes. There’s a map with large colored regions and a matching deck of color cards. You play cards to put tents or totems—your pieces—down on those regions. Halfway through there’s scoring based on how many tents you have in each region. At the end there’s another scoring based on that plus contiguous clusters of tents as well as majority control of totems in pairs of connected territories. That’s roughly it.

Even using just those baseline mechanics though it’s very good. There’s a lot of strategy to consider, like playing for tents or clusters or totems, and where. Lots of tactics too. E.g., the number of totems that can be put on a region is bound by the greatest number of one player’s tents. So, in one game, I had 3 tents in a region with space for 6, and two totems I wanted to put down more tents, but if I did that I’d expose myself to losing totem majority. There’s a lot of decision making like that.

There are some neat elements too, like mountains that get randomly placed on some connected territories so that the board’s not identical every game.

I’d say running time for unfamiliar players is something like an hour to 90 minutes. Setup is fast. Scoring takes some effort, but it’s only done twice, and there are some clever production elements to keep it manageable. E.g., territory connections are numbered, so you can resolve them in an explicit sequence.

I recommend Iwari for anybody but the most casual of gamers.

Note that there is a deluxe version that contains additional maps and optional game mechanics; I have no idea of the price or value difference but it sounds interesting.