README

the game
========

I came up with this game over 20 years ago, with pen and paper, in the middle of a school class, if I remember correctly. It's like a 2D geometric version of nim.

It isn't the best game in the world, but it is not bad. And it's very cheap to play, it only requires pen and paper, or maybe just a rock and a hard surface to be drawn upon with the rock, or a stick and a floor of dirt.

Another interesting thing about it is that it renders itself to many variations: in the number of squares, in the number of the sides of the polygons used, in the number of players.

At the time I remember saying it wasn't trying to be a great game, just better than tic-tac-toe (which is not a good game). The idea is that you'll learn how to play the game here and teach it to others in the meatspace when necessary.

Also, beware of people who try to make many circles around a square just for generating confusion, or people who will draw a line very close to another line to try to win by not leaving any room for something to go there when there should be. These people are either evil or just didn't understand the game, so maybe try explaining again.

the code
========

This code is almost fully generated by an LLM. After 20 years of not managing to spare enough time to learn to make this myself I decided to do it this way.

The software here is made only for demo purposes, anyway. The actual game must be played with pen and paper.

the deployment
==============

This codebase is a static web app and was deployed to Netlify at https://josephsquares.netlify.app, so it should be playable there if Netlify still exists.