This is a list of boardgame related research papers, code, blog posts, and other media. The list primarily includes research on "solving/playing/learning" games (by various different approaches), or occasionaly about designing or meta-aspects of the game. This doesn't cover all aspects of each game (notably missing social-science stuff), but should be of interest to anyone interested in boardgames and their optimal play. While there is a ton of easily accessible research on games like Chess and Go, finding prior work on more contemporary games can be a bit hard. This list focuses on the latter. If you are interested in well-researched games like Chess, Go, Hex, take a look at the Chess programming wiki instead. The list also covers some computer-games that fall under similar themes.
You can browse the collection at https://www.zotero.org/captn3m0/collections/8S9AI4TI as well.
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- 2048
- Accessibility
- Azul
- Blokus
- Carcassonne
- Diplomacy
- Dixit
- Dominion
- Frameworks
- Game Design
- General Gameplay
- Hanabi
- Hearthstone
- Hive
- Jenga
- Kingdomino
- Lost Cities
- Mafia
- Magic: The Gathering
- Mobile Games
- Modern Art: The card game
- Monopoly
- Monopoly Deal
- Netrunner
- Nmbr9
- Pandemic
- Patchwork
- Pentago
- Puerto Rico
- Quixo
- Race for the Galaxy
- Resistance: Avalon
- RISK
- Santorini
- Scotland Yard
- Secret Hitler
- Set
- Settlers of Catan
- Shobu
- Terra Mystica
- Terraforming Mars
- Tetris Link
- Ticket to Ride
- Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe
- UNO
- Yahtzee
- Similar Projects
- License
- Systematic Selection of N-Tuple Networks for 2048 (bookSection)
- Systematic selection of N-tuple networks with consideration of interinfluence for game 2048 (conferencePaper)
- An investigation into 2048 AI strategies (conferencePaper)
- Threes!, Fives, 1024!, and 2048 are Hard (journalArticle)
- Making Change in 2048 (journalArticle)
- Analysis of the Game "2048" and its Generalization in Higher Dimensions (journalArticle)
- Multi-Stage Temporal Difference Learning for 2048-like Games (journalArticle)
- 2048 is (PSPACE) Hard, but Sometimes Easy (journalArticle)
- Temporal difference learning of N-tuple networks for the game 2048 (conferencePaper)
- On the Complexity of Slide-and-Merge Games (journalArticle)
- 2048 Without New Tiles Is Still Hard (journalArticle)
- Meeple Centred Design: A Heuristic Toolkit for Evaluating the Accessibility of Tabletop Games (journalArticle)
- Eighteen Months of Meeple Like Us: An Exploration into the State of Board Game Accessibility (journalArticle)
- A summary of a dissertation on Azul (report)
- Ceramic: A research environment based on the multi-player strategic board game Azul (conferencePaper)
- Ceramic: A research environment based on the multi-player strategic board game Azul (computerProgram)
- FPGA Blokus Duo Solver using a massively parallel architecture (conferencePaper)
- Blokus Duo game on FPGA (conferencePaper)
- Algorithm Modeling for Hardware Implementation of a Blokus Duo Player (thesis)
- Artificial Intelligence for Blokus Classic using Heuristics, FloodFill, and Greedy Algorithm (journalArticle)
- FPGA implementation of Blokus Duo player using hardware/software co-design (conferencePaper)
- Exploring Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Simple Blokus (journalArticle)
- An FPGA-based specific processor for Blokus Duo (conferencePaper)
- Blokus Game Solver (report)
- Highly scalable, shared-memory, Monte-Carlo tree search based Blokus Duo Solver on FPGA (conferencePaper)
- Implementation of a highly scalable blokus duo solver on FPGA (conferencePaper)
- An implementation of Blokus Duo player on FPGA (conferencePaper)
- The Liquid Metal Blokus Duo Design (conferencePaper)
- Artificial intelligence of Blokus Duo on FPGA using Cyber Work Bench (conferencePaper)
- Hardware/software co-design architecture for Blokus Duo solver (conferencePaper)
- From C to Blokus Duo with LegUp high-level synthesis (conferencePaper)
- Blokus Duo engine on a Zynq (conferencePaper)
- Optimize MinMax algorithm to solve Blokus Duo game by HDL (conferencePaper)
- A Case Study of FPGA Blokus Duo Solver by System-Level Design (journalArticle)
- Playing Carcassonne with Monte Carlo Tree Search (journalArticle)
- On the Evolution of the MCTS Upper Confidence Bounds for Trees by Means of Evolutionary Algorithms in the Game of Carcassonne (journalArticle)
- Evolving the MCTS Upper Confidence Bounds for Trees Using a Semantic-inspired Evolutionary Algorithm in the Game of Carcassonne (preprint)
- Learning to Play No-Press Diplomacy with Best Response Policy Iteration (journalArticle)
- No Press Diplomacy: Modeling Multi-Agent Gameplay (journalArticle)
- Agent Madoff: A Heuristic-Based Negotiation Agent For The Diplomacy Strategy Game (journalArticle)
- Monte Carlo Tree Search for the Game of Diplomacy (conferencePaper)
- Human-Level Performance in No-Press Diplomacy via Equilibrium Search (journalArticle)
- Creative Captioning: An AI Grand Challenge Based on the Dixit Board Game (journalArticle)
- Dixit: Interactive Visual Storytelling via Term Manipulation (journalArticle)
- Dominion Simulator (computerProgram)
- Dominion Simulator Source Code (computerProgram)
- Best and worst openings in Dominion (blogPost)
- Optimal Card Ratios in Dominion (blogPost)
- Card Winning Stats on Dominion Server (blogPost)
- Dominion Strategy Forum (forumPost)
- Clustering Player Strategies from Variable-Length Game Logs in Dominion (journalArticle)
- Game Balancing in Dominion: An Approach to Identifying Problematic Game Elements (journalArticle)
- RLCard: A Toolkit for Reinforcement Learning in Card Games (journalArticle)
- Design and Implementation of TAG: A Tabletop Games Framework (journalArticle)
- Game Tree Search Algorithms - C++ library for AI bot programming. (computerProgram)
- TAG: Tabletop Games Framework (computerProgram)
- MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research (conferencePaper)
- Exploring anonymity in cooperative board games (conferencePaper)
- Player of Games (journalArticle)
- A general reinforcement learning algorithm that masters chess, shogi, and Go through self-play (journalArticle)
- How to Make the Perfect Fireworks Display: Two Strategies forHanabi (journalArticle)
- Evaluating and modelling Hanabi-playing agents (conferencePaper)
- The Hanabi challenge: A new frontier for AI research (journalArticle)
- The 2018 Hanabi competition (conferencePaper)
- Diverse Agents for Ad-Hoc Cooperation in Hanabi (conferencePaper)
- Improving Policies via Search in Cooperative Partially Observable Games (journalArticle)
- Hanabi is NP-hard, Even for Cheaters who Look at Their Cards (journalArticle)
- Generating and Adapting to Diverse Ad-Hoc Cooperation Agents in Hanabi (journalArticle)
- Evaluating the Rainbow DQN Agent in Hanabi with Unseen Partners (journalArticle)
- Re-determinizing MCTS in Hanabi (conferencePaper)
- Evolving Agents for the Hanabi 2018 CIG Competition (conferencePaper)
- Aspects of the Cooperative Card Game Hanabi (bookSection)
- Playing Hanabi Near-Optimally (bookSection)
- An intentional AI for hanabi (conferencePaper)
- Solving Hanabi: Estimating Hands by Opponent's Actions in Cooperative Game with Incomplete Information (conferencePaper)
- A Browser-based Interface for the Exploration and Evaluation of Hanabi AIs (journalArticle)
- I see what you see: Integrating eye tracking into Hanabi playing agents (journalArticle)
- State of the art Hanabi bots + simulation framework in rust (computerProgram)
- A strategy simulator for the well-known cooperative card game Hanabi (computerProgram)
- A framework for writing bots that play Hanabi (computerProgram)
- Operationalizing Intentionality to Play Hanabi with Human Players (journalArticle)
- Behavioral Evaluation of Hanabi Rainbow DQN Agents and Rule-Based Agents (journalArticle)
- Playing mini-Hanabi card game with Q-learning (conferencePaper)
- Hanabi Open Agent Dataset (computerProgram)
- Hanabi Open Agent Dataset (conferencePaper)
- Evaluation of Human-AI Teams for Learned and Rule-Based Agents in Hanabi (journalArticle)
- Emergence of Cooperative Impression With Self-Estimation, Thinking Time, and Concordance of Risk Sensitivity in Playing Hanabi (journalArticle)
- K-level Reasoning for Zero-Shot Coordination in Hanabi (conferencePaper)
- Is Vanilla Policy Gradient Overlooked? Analyzing Deep Reinforcement Learning for Hanabi (journalArticle)
- Generating and Adapting to Diverse Ad-Hoc Partners in Hanabi (journalArticle)
- Theory of Mind for Multi-agent Coordination in Hanabi (thesis)
- The Hanabi challenge: From Artificial Teams to Mixed Human-Machine Teams (thesis)
- A Graphical User Interface For The Hanabi Challenge Benchmark (thesis)
- Analysis of Symmetry and Conventions in Off-Belief Learning (OBL) in Hanabi (blogPost)
- Using intuitive behavior models to adapt to and work with human teammates in Hanabi (thesis)
- Behavioral Differences is the Key of Ad-hoc Team Cooperation in Multiplayer Games Hanabi (preprint)
- The Hidden Rules of Hanabi: How Humans Outperform AI Agents (conferencePaper)
- Mapping Hearthstone Deck Spaces through MAP-Elites with Sliding Boundaries (journalArticle)
- Multiplayer Tension In the Wild: A Hearthstone Case (conferencePaper)
- Improving Hearthstone AI by Combining MCTS and Supervised Learning Algorithms (preprint)
- Analysis of gameplay strategies in hearthstone: a data science approach (thesis)
- Decision-Making in Hearthstone Based on Evolutionary Algorithm (journalArticle)
- I am a legend: Hacking hearthstone using statistical learning methods (conferencePaper)
- The Many AI Challenges of Hearthstone (journalArticle)
- Evolutionary deckbuilding in hearthstone (conferencePaper)
- Evolving the Hearthstone Meta (preprint)
- Optimizing Hearthstone agents using an evolutionary algorithm (journalArticle)
- Exploring the hearthstone deck space (conferencePaper)
- Computational Intelligence Techniques for Games with Incomplete Information (thesis)
- Perfect Information Hearthstone is PSPACE-hard (preprint)
- Summarizing Strategy Card Game AI Competition (preprint)
- Towards sample efficient deep reinforcement learning in collectible card games (journalArticle)
- On the complexity of Hive (thesis)
- The Cost of Reinforcement Learning for Game Engines: The AZ-Hive Case-study (conferencePaper)
- Jidoukan Jenga: Teaching English through remixing games and game rules (journalArticle)
- Maximum genus of the Jenga like configurations (journalArticle)
- Deep Instance Segmentation and Visual Servoing to Play Jenga with a Cost-Effective Robotic System (journalArticle)
- Monte Carlo Methods for the Game Kingdomino (conferencePaper)
- Monte Carlo Methods for the Game Kingdomino (journalArticle)
- NP-completeness of the game Kingdomino (journalArticle)
- Applying Neural Networks and Genetic Programming to the Game Lost Cities (conferencePaper)
- A mathematical model of the Mafia game (journalArticle)
- Automatic Long-Term Deception Detection in Group Interaction Videos (journalArticle)
- Human-Side Strategies in the Werewolf Game Against the Stealth Werewolf Strategy (bookSection)
- A Theoretical Study of Mafia Games (journalArticle)
- Ensemble Determinization in Monte Carlo Tree Search for the Imperfect Information Card Game Magic: The Gathering (journalArticle)
- Optimal Card-Collecting Strategies for Magic: The Gathering (journalArticle)
- Monte Carlo search applied to card selection in Magic: The Gathering (conferencePaper)
- Magic: the Gathering is as Hard as Arithmetic (journalArticle)
- Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete (journalArticle)
- Neural Networks Models for Analyzing Magic: the Gathering Cards (journalArticle)
- Neural Networks Models for Analyzing Magic: The Gathering Cards (bookSection)
- The Complexity of Deciding Legality of a Single Step of Magic: The Gathering (conferencePaper)
- Magic: The Gathering in Common Lisp (conferencePaper)
- Magic: The Gathering in Common Lisp (computerProgram)
- Mathematical programming and Magic: The Gathering (thesis)
- Deck Construction Strategies for Magic: The Gathering (conferencePaper)
- Deckbuilding in Magic: The Gathering Using a Genetic Algorithm (thesis)
- Magic: The Gathering Deck Performance Prediction (report)
- AI solutions for drafting in Magic: the Gathering (journalArticle)
- Trainyard is NP-Hard (journalArticle)
- Threes!, Fives, 1024!, and 2048 are Hard (journalArticle)
- Rikudo is NP-complete (journalArticle)
- A constraint programming based solver for Modern Art (computerProgram)
- Monopoly as a Markov Process (journalArticle)
- Learning Monopoly Gameplay: A Hybrid Model-Free Deep Reinforcement Learning and Imitation Learning Approach (journalArticle)
- Negotiation strategy of agents in the MONOPOLY game (conferencePaper)
- Generating interesting Monopoly boards from open data (conferencePaper)
- Estimating the probability that the game of Monopoly never ends (conferencePaper)
- Learning to Play Monopoly with Monte Carlo Tree Search (report)
- Monopoly Using Reinforcement Learning (conferencePaper)
- A Markovian Exploration of Monopoly (report)
- Learning to play Monopoly: A Reinforcement Learning approach (conferencePaper)
- What’s the Best Monopoly Strategy? (presentation)
- Implementation of Artificial Intelligence with 3 Different Characters of AI Player on “Monopoly Deal” Computer Game (bookSection)
- Netrunner Mate-in-1 or -2 is Weakly NP-Hard (journalArticle)
- Nmbr9 as a Constraint Programming Challenge (journalArticle)
- Nmbr9 as a Constraint Programming Challenge (blogPost)
- NP-Completeness of Pandemic (journalArticle)
- State Representation and Polyomino Placement for the Game Patchwork (blogPost)
- State Representation and Polyomino Placement for the Game Patchwork (journalArticle)
- State Representation and Polyomino Placement for the Game Patchwork (presentation)
- On Solving Pentago (thesis)
- Pentago is a First Player Win: Strongly Solving a Game Using Parallel In-Core Retrograde Analysis (journalArticle)
- A massively parallel pentago solver (computerProgram)
- An interactive explorer for perfect pentago play (computerProgram)
- An Application of Machine Learning to the Board Game Pentago (report)
- Learning finite functions by neural networks : Evaluation of Pentago positions by convolutional neural networks (report)
- QUIXO is EXPTIME-complete (journalArticle)
- Quixo Is Solved (journalArticle)
- SCOUT: A Case-Based Reasoning Agent for Playing Race for the Galaxy (bookSection)
- Ludometrics: Luck, and How to Measure It (journalArticle)
- Finding Friend and Foe in Multi-Agent Games (journalArticle)
- Mini-Risk: Strategies for a Simplified Board Game (journalArticle)
- Learning the risk board game with classifier systems (conferencePaper)
- Markov Chains and the RISK Board Game (journalArticle)
- Markov Chains for the RISK Board Game Revisited (journalArticle)
- Planning an Endgame Move Set for the Game RISK: A Comparison of Search Algorithms (journalArticle)
- An Intelligent Artificial Player for the Game of Risk (presentation)
- RISKy Business: An In-Depth Look at the Game RISK (journalArticle)
- RISK Board Game ‐ Battle Outcome Analysis (journalArticle)
- A multi-agent system for playing the board game risk (thesis)
- Monte Carlo Tree Search for Risk (conferencePaper)
- Wargaming with Monte-Carlo Tree Search (presentation)
- A Mathematical Analysis of the Game of Santorini (thesis)
- A Mathematical Analysis of the Game of Santorini (computerProgram)
- The complexity of Scotland Yard (report)
- Competing in a Complex Hidden Role Game with Information Set Monte Carlo Tree Search (journalArticle)
- Game, Set, Math (journalArticle)
- The Joy of SET (journalArticle)
- The effectiveness of persuasion in The Settlers of Catan (conferencePaper)
- Avoiding Revenge Using Optimal Opponent Ranking Strategy in the Board Game Catan (journalArticle)
- Game strategies for The Settlers of Catan (conferencePaper)
- Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Settlers of Catan (bookSection)
- Deep Reinforcement Learning in Strategic Board Game Environments (bookSection)
- Settlers of Catan bot trained using reinforcement learning (computerProgram)
- Trading in a multiplayer board game: Towards an analysis of non-cooperative dialogue (conferencePaper)
- POMCP with Human Preferencesin Settlers of Catan (journalArticle)
- The impact of loaded dice in Catan (blogPost)
- Monte Carlo Tree Search in a Modern Board Game Framework (journalArticle)
- Reinforcement Learning of Strategies for Settlers of Catan (conferencePaper)
- Playing Catan with Cross-dimensional Neural Network (journalArticle)
- Strategic Dialogue Management via Deep Reinforcement Learning (journalArticle)
- Analysis of 'The Settlers of Catan' Using Markov Chains (thesis)
- Learning to Play Settlers of Catan with Deep Reinforcement Learning (blogPost)
- Using Ant Colony Optimisation for map generation and improving game balance in the Terra Mystica and Settlers of Catan board games (conferencePaper)
- Shobu AI Playground (computerProgram)
- Shobu randomly played games dataset (webpage)
- Using Tabu Search Algorithm for Map Generation in the Terra Mystica Tabletop Game (conferencePaper)
- Mastering Terra Mystica: Applying Self-Play to Multi-agent Cooperative Board Games (journalArticle)
- TM AI: Play TM against AI players. (computerProgram)
- Using Ant Colony Optimisation for map generation and improving game balance in the Terra Mystica and Settlers of Catan board games (conferencePaper)
- Map Generation and Balance in the Terra Mystica Board Game Using Particle Swarm and Local Search (bookSection)
- Using Ant Colony Optimisation for map generation and improving game balance in the Terra Mystica and Settlers of Catan board games (conferencePaper)
- TAG: Terraforming Mars (journalArticle)
- A New Challenge: Approaching Tetris Link with AI (journalArticle)
- AI-based playtesting of contemporary board games (conferencePaper)
- Materials for Ticket to Ride Seattle and a framework for making more game boards (computerProgram)
- The Difficulty of Learning Ticket to Ride (report)
- Evolving maps and decks for ticket to ride (conferencePaper)
- Applications of Graph Theory and Probability in the Board Game Ticket to Ride (presentation)
- At Most 43 Moves, At Least 29: Optimal Strategies and Bounds for Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe (journalArticle)
- UNO Is Hard, Even for a Single Player (bookSection)
- The complexity of UNO (journalArticle)
- Nearly Optimal Computer Play in Multi-player Yahtzee (bookSection)
- Computer Strategies for Solitaire Yahtzee (conferencePaper)
- Modeling expert problem solving in a game of chance: a Yahtzeec case study (journalArticle)
- Probabilites In Yahtzee (journalArticle)
- Optimal Solitaire Yahtzee Strategies (presentation)
- Yahtzee: a Large Stochastic Environment for RL Benchmarks (journalArticle)
- Optimal Yahtzee performance in multi-player games (thesis)
- How to Maximize Your Score in Solitaire Yahtzee (manuscript)
- Using Deep Q-Learning to Compare Strategy Ladders of Yahtzee (thesis)
- Defensive Yahtzee (report)
- An Optimal Strategy for Yahtzee (report)
- Let’s Get Rolling! Exact Optimal Solitaire Yahtzee (journalArticle)
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