Board game strategies in introductory computer science

  • Authors:

  • Ivona Bezakova;James E. Heliotis;Sean P. Strout

  • Affiliations:

  • Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

We present three open-ended freshman projects where students design and implement their own player strategies for well-established board games: Quoridor by Mirko Marchesi (Gigamic), San Francisco Cable Cars by Dirk Henn (Queen Games), and The aMAZEing Labyrinth by Max J. Kobbert (Ravensburger). Unlike modern computer games, most board games are inherently discrete. For example, the board tends to have a fixed number of allowed positions for the game pieces and every player performs a search through a finite number of possible moves to decide which move to take next. As such, designing a player strategy for a board game provides a very natural context for basic data structures, searching algorithms, and other concepts typically covered in a freshman-level computer science sequence. Furthermore, the project allows for continual improvements to one's strategy, targeting both beginners as well as more advanced programmers.