How to play
Premise
You are playing a custom version of tic-tac-toe against a LLM, more specifically `meta-llama/llama-4-maverick-17b-128e-instruct` from groq. However, everything isn't as it seems, the AI has more power than you do, and will do anything to bring you to the ground... I mean anything.
The game is played on a N by K board, which starts as 3x3, however can grow with various expansion cards.
- Players: There are two players: you and the AI
- Hands: Each player starts with 5 cards and auto-refills every 2 rounds..
- Cards: Cards can be as simple as your team letter, or as complex as inverting the board. You unlock new cards based on your level, which increaces every two rounds.
Difficulty
The below Gameplay information is for Normal mode, which is the default on the slider. HARD mode is selected by dragging the slider to the far right, Baby mode is the close left side, and Infant mode is selected by dragging the slider to the far left.
Difficulties change the initial settings and probabilities in the game. This includes starting win length, board size, and unlock levels/growth rates for chance for cards.
Gameplay
Place cards on the board by dragging them from the bottom onto the grid. You can test this out below (the cards are quite fun to play around with).
Scoring and Winning
Scoring is quite simple, but it can seem complicated for few. The goal is to get K cells of the same kind that belong to your team in a row. The win condition (K) is custom and controlled by the win condition cards, it starts at 3 to mimic regular tic-tac-toe, but can be as small as 2.
But what about the different cells
- Blocked cells count like empty cells, except they cannot be changed by you, only the AI posseses that power.
- Neutral cells count for both teams, if there is a line of neutrals and no line for another team, it is a tie.
- Lowercase cells count for your team, but cannot mix with capital cells.
- Chemical cells are identical to empty cells, but they spread.
Examples
For all of these examples, assume the win length is set to 3, but these hold true for any win length.
| Lines | Outcome |
|---|---|
| X X X | Win for X |
| x x x | Win for X |
| ? ? ? and X X X | Win for X |
| ? O O | Win for O |
| X x X | No win |
| # O O | No win |
| ? ? ? | Tie |
| ? X ? and O O O | Tie |
| Chem Chem Chem and O O O | O, chemical cells act as empty cells |
| X X X, x x x, o o o, O O O, # # #, ? ? ? | Tie |
| X X X, ? ? O | Tie |
| The entire board is filled, but no one has won. | Tie |
Cards (draggable)
| Card | Name | Info |
|---|---|---|
 | X | Base card for the X team, places an X at the selected position if the cell is empty. If the cell is not empty the card is returned. |
 | O | Base card for the O team, places an O at the selected position if the cell is empty. If the cell is not empty the card is returned. |
 | Extend | Extends the board by row/column on the side closest to where the card was placed. If the card is the same distance from many sides (ie. center), it is returned. |
 | Lowercase | Lowercases a cell. If the cell is not a capital X or O, it is returned. |
 | Block | Blocks a cell. Why would you do this? This cell is only controllable by the AI. |
 | Neutralize | Makes a cell neutral, the cell must be empty. If it is not, the card is returned. |
 | Win Length +1 | Increaces the amount of cells in a row required to win |
 | Win Length -1 | Decreaces the amount of cells in a row required to win |
 | Roulette | 1/6 chance to shoot the AI, if that fails, 1/6 chance to shoot yourself. (death = loss). If the AI plays this card, it still plays itself first. |
 | Scientific Reaction | Spawns a catalyst for the chemical compound that consumes everything it touches! |
 | Deck back | Not a card, but it is what the AI holds. |