puzzle games

2swap explains how he solved the Klotski sliding-block puzzle by mapping its full state space as a graph and visualizing it. The video includes footage of the Guinness world-record solve and links to an interactive graph.

Clip from the 1983 film WarGames in which the computer Joshua concludes that global thermonuclear war has no winner and proposes a game of chess instead.

A two-hour complete longplay of the 1993 MS-DOS puzzle game The Incredible Machine, in which players assemble Rube Goldberg contraptions to complete simple tasks.

The final scene of the 1983 film WarGames, in which the WOPR computer runs through nuclear war scenarios and concludes that the only winning move is not to play. It is a six-minute clip uploaded in higher quality than earlier copies.

Tom7 explains and demos software that learns to play NES games by finding score patterns in memory and then searching for inputs that raise it. It is the video companion to his SIGBOVIK paper.

Roaring Kitty's July 2020 analysis of GameStop, arguing a bullish deep-value case when the stock was about $4 and short interest exceeded 100%. It covers fundamentals, cash balance and technicals.

Josh Bloch and Jeremy Manson present the eighth installment of Java Puzzlers at Google I/O 2011, a set of surprising corner cases in the Java language and libraries. It includes puzzlers on traps such as regular expression performance.

The climactic lesson scene from the 1983 film WarGames, in which the computer learns that the only winning move in nuclear war is not to play. It includes the character entering zero players and the famous closing line.

Tom Scott plays the Royal Game of Ur against British Museum curator Irving Finkel, who deciphered its rules from a cuneiform tablet. Finkel teaches the game and explains its history as the oldest playable board game.

Ross Scott of Accursed Farms makes a 76-minute argument that selling video games as a service is a form of consumer fraud. He lays out legal arguments that games are goods, covers ownership and programmed obsolescence, and discusses game preservation.

Jacob Geller's video essay examines how architecture in schools and in video games, such as cover shooters, is shaped by violence. It touches on brutalism, campus policing and protests.

Ross Scott of Accursed Farms lays out a campaign to stop publishers from permanently shutting down games, using The Crew as the test case. He covers government initiatives and the legal options, and the stopkillinggames.com site.

Mathologer shows a simple idea, the commutator, that lets anyone who can solve the first layer design their own full Rubik's cube solution. The same idea carries over to other symmetric twisty puzzles such as the Megaminx.

Jonathan Blow gives a roughly 90-minute talk, followed by Q&A, on how video games could actually improve education, in contrast to what is currently being tried.

Intro and gameplay footage of Rescue on Fractalus, the 1985 Lucasfilm Games title for Atari XL/XE, programmed by Loren Carpenter and David Fox. It shows the game's fractal-generated mountain terrain.

Stuart Ashen presents a talk at the 2017 Norwich Gaming Festival on Hareraiser, a notoriously bad video game tied to the Masquerade treasure hunt. He explores why it may be the worst game ever made.

Jonathan Blow's first talk on designing a new programming language for games, which became Jai. He explains the problems with C++ and why Go, Rust and D do not fit game development.

Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.

Kyle Hill of Because Science explains and demonstrates, using real cards, how Magic: The Gathering can be used to build a Turing machine, a computer inside the card game.

Maker's Muse designs a 3D-printed and laser-cut puzzle box to test whether wild sulphur-crested cockatoos can solve it. He documents how the birds work it out.

Peter Pringle sings the opening of the Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian, accompanied by a reconstructed ancient instrument. The description gives background on Sumer, cuneiform and how little is known about the language's pronunciation.

Mark Rober builds a machine that plays the Cyclone arcade game with perfect timing and discovers the game is rigged so that perfect play still loses. The video explains the physics and electronics tricks behind carnival-style skill games.

Chess master Yosha Iglesias presents an analysis of Hans Niemann's games, highlighting a string of 100% engine-correlation games and comparing them with other players. It was published during the 2022 Niemann-Carlsen cheating scandal.

The video argues that machine-learning-based aimbots, which read the screen and drive the controls externally, could make cheating in FPS games undetectable. It explains how conventional aimbots work, how the new approach differs, and speculates on possible detection.

Morphcat Games explains how they fit Micro Mages, a full-featured NES game, into 40 kilobytes. It covers compression of sprites and level layouts and other space-saving tricks.

A tool-assisted speedrun of Ocarina of Time at Summer Games Done Quick 2022, using TASBot and arbitrary code execution to reach an alternate ending in about 53 minutes. The run is introduced by its creators and followed by an interview.

A tool-assisted run of Brain Age by TASBot, shown at Awesome Games Done Quick 2016. The bot gives deliberately deranged answers while exploiting the game's error-prone recognition.

Feature-length documentary following DeepMind's AlphaGo program as it prepares for and plays the 2016 match against Go champion Lee Sedol. It covers the team, the games, and the emotional reaction of the Go world to an AI beating a top human.

Jonathan Blow speaks at UC Berkeley's CSUA about how to program independent games. He argues for keeping code simple, avoiding unnecessary work, and shipping.

Jonathan Blow's 2010 Rice University talk argues that game designers refine their techniques in ways that can manipulate players, as with A/B-tested social games. He discusses the ethical responsibility of designers and what games can offer beyond addiction.

An Extra Credits episode on how games use Skinner box operant conditioning and reward schedules to keep players playing and spending. It argues for more immersive design mechanics than simple reward loops.

A HandmadeCon 2016 panel where Chris Hecker, John Miles, Sean Barrett and Chris Green give an oral history of software texture mapping in 90s games.

GothamChess walks through AlphaZero's famous games against Stockfish, highlighting its unusual pawn sacrifices and positional style. It is aimed at chess fans rather than ML specialists.

Joseph Anderson's long critique of Jonathan Blow's puzzle game The Witness, covering its gameplay, its hundreds of puzzles and its philosophical pretensions. He argues it is a great game that he nonetheless advises against playing.

Grandmaster David Howell tests Magnus Carlsen by showing him chess positions and asking which famous games they come from. Carlsen recognizes many almost instantly.

A People Make Games follow-up investigation into Roblox, built on stories from players and creators after the channel's first video. It covers the platform's treatment of young developers and its moderation.

Jonathan Blow's CreativeMornings talk arguing that business models shape game design, drawing an analogy between 1970s TV and HBO and between free-to-play and premium games. He calls for games that inspire awe rather than chase constraints.

Tom Scott-style absurdist tour by Tom7 of SIGBOVIK chess projects: a tournament of 30 weird chess algorithms used to rate a color- and piece-blind chess program. Topics include mirrors, arithmetic encoding, perverted game tree search and a diluted Stockfish.

Veritasium examines which experts have real expertise, drawing on chess research and work by Klein and Kahneman. It explains that expertise comes from pattern recognition built through deliberate practice in valid, feedback-rich environments.

Chess player John Bartholomew plays opponents rated below 1000 on Chess.com and comments on optimal strategy and typical mistakes at that level. It is part of his Climbing the Rating Ladder series.