Milda Matilda Games

Turncoats

Turncoats is a competitive game for 2–5 players, where three factions are at war. The players take on the role of Aspirants and Interlopers, not obviously tied to any one group. Instead, they must manage their loyalties, represented by stones in their hand that they keep hidden from everyone else.

→ mildamatildagames.wordpress.com/turncoats-2

Published: August 2021 · Updated: November 2023

Turncoats is one of my favorite simple strategy games. In 2022 I made a crude Svelte-based Functional implementation so that I could start building a Monte-Carlo based AI to play against.

Time escaped me, and life and I moved on. So recently I asked Claude to finish it up for me. The core logic was built by me - the Bots and better UI were made by Fable 5.

I love a Single-HTML-Application.

The game is deceptively simple, so most people and myself struggle on the first play. You use the limited stones in your hand to take actions - which allow you to shape the game state, but at the cost of your ability to win for a given color. All the while, the stones you spend typically only benefit their respective colors unless you're creative.

I've loved taking my bag of marbles to parks, to restaurants, and everywhere else where a moment on phones can be interrupted by a simple and clever game. The Pass and Play version I made is not intended to be a viable alternative to play - no no, the tactile nature of the original is much better than any software. This version of the game is for me to study the game, study the broader space of Monte-Carlo based search, and make introductions to my favorite games more approachable :)

You should go buy or make a physical copy.

I'm mostly curious about the game from the perspective of strategy, optimization, and Classical Automation. So next, I will likely start building some simple dashboards so that game results can be saved, studied, and shared.