Shifty

Shifty Homepage at the Designer's Site Shifty is a square board connection game, where the goal is to create a chain of orthogonally and/or diagonally connected stones between two opposite edges of the board. The unique feature of Shifty is that on your turn you must either place a stone orthogonally adjacent to at least one friendly stone or you must move any friendly stone, by a chess queen's move, to any empty intersection orthogonally adjacent to fewer friendly stones than the intersection it started on. As a result you must often forego adding a stone to the board, and instead "shoot" a stone already on the board to a strategically key spot. This sharpshooting dynamic is the source of the game's strategic interest.