12 Comments
Mar 28, 2023Liked by Geoff Engelstein

Chaos Tiles is a game (game system really, it comes with rules for two games) that uses two nonperiodic pieces.

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Mar 26, 2023Liked by Geoff Engelstein

While I haven't seen any commercial games that use Penrose tiles other than the one you mention, I did encounter a fellow designer who was fascinated with these (aren't we all?) who had a working prototype. It's been many years so I don't remember much of the mechanics, other than that you initially laid down a board of these tiles however you wanted, there were different colors on the tiles, and the core mechanic was collecting them (they had to engineer these little suction-cup-on-a-stick things to allow for collecting a single tile when it was surrounded by other tiles). When they reached out to Roger Penrose to ask if they could credit him, name the game "Penrose" in his honor, etc. - he said no. So... yeah, fertile ground for exploration: tile-laying, tile-collection, or even just as a way to build a random map of territories. And yeah, every game designer I know is inspired by this right now, and I suspect we'll either see a LOT of prototypes in the next few years, or we'll see none because everyone will be figuring that everyone else is doing it :D

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Mar 25, 2023Liked by Geoff Engelstein

Have a look at Shards of Alkemae — https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/313824/shards-alkemae — which the designer has brought to some recent Protospiels. The BGG entry lists a publication date, but I think he is still fine-tuning some of the rules. I don't know where or how one would obtain a copy if one wanted.

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This looks more like a t-shirt than a hat to me. 😁

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Cir*Kis uses Penrose tiling. It's a thoroughly average abstract.

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Great read. Would love to see a game application of this.

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Cir*Kis , the is the only other geme using Penrose Tiling that comes to my mind has already been mentioned in the comments. But I´d like to throw in another shape to tile the plane, the cairo pentagon. I´ve used it in my tile laying game Cairo Corridor.

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author

Very cool! I will check that out.

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Wow this is amazing! Thanks for educating about mathematical history and cool facts!

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I wonder what board wargaming opportunities there might be from replacing hexes with these tiles.

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Mar 25, 2023·edited Mar 25, 2023

Excellent piece as always! Thanks!

BTW. Hamlet has dissimilar tile though I don't think it is a penrose tiling.

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