There is an intimate relationship between [abstract strategy] games and puzzles: every board position presents the player with the puzzle, What is the best move?, which in theory could be solved by logic alone. A good abstract game can therefore be thought of as a “family” of potentially interesting logic puzzles, and the play consists of each player posing such a puzzle to the other. Good players are the ones who find the most difficult puzzles to present to their opponents.
Quotes about abstraction
For me, abstract games are the quintessential board games. This means that they should captivate you, they should have rules that can be learned in less than two minutes, they should have infinite depth and replayability. And there are no gimmicks; you can’t hide the game’s weaknesses under a theme or under beautiful components.
The realism vs. abstraction contest should always tilt toward abstraction. Games aren’t models of reality as much as they’re abstractions of reality.
