Nim Game XL

J de Montcheuil

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About this game

The program Nim Game XL allows to play a wide variety of Nim games, from the simplest one with only one heap up to complex games with dozen or several dozen of heaps.

Nim games are strategy games for two players (the program can replace the other player so you can play alone). We have at the beginning heaps (or rows) of objects (which can be matches, tokens, coins ... and why not bricks ...), and one after other the players must remove one or more objects in one heap, until there are no more objects. You can decide as end game option that the one who gets the last object is the winner or the loser ... They belong to the games called "impartial games" where you can find a winning strategy by calculation.

An example of Nim game is Marienbad, there are 4 heaps and objects are matches. You can play this game with the program Marienbad, available on Android market, or with Nim Game XL (you have just to take the defaults).

You will find in the game help explaining how to use the program and to calculate the winning strategies. If there are not too many heaps, you should be able to do calculations mentally with a little practice. For more complex cases, the program offers to each player a worksheet to write numbers and do small operations.

Ratings and reviews

I installed this app and the next day got an unauthorized login attempt on my google account from an unknown US AT&T device. That's all I know. I don't know if it was because of this app or not, but I'd like to hear from Msr Montcheuil about his development & security practices.

This is an awesome app, but I think we could do more with the game. To add more set ups, to manipulate the rules, and winning conditions. There is a game where instead of the winning conditions being that you take the last object or not, that you end up with an odd or even number of objects. Also to note that there is a set up in which you have a set of grid squares with objects in a number of them. The rules being that if you take an object everything in itsnorth, east, and northeast goes with it. The winning conditions are that you either take the last object or not take the last object. Old gold is a potential as well. One set up is a number of empty squares between objects. The rules are not to take away objects but to close the gap between the objects instead. We could manipulate the rules as to allow for splitting heaps.

Great game!

What's new

Adapting for Android 13