The best games are often the ones built from the simplest systems. Tetris is an obvious example; five basic shapes and the imperative to fit them together without any gaps. The rules of chess can be grasped quickly, but the possibilities are close to endless. And while it’s only really a game in name only, Conway’s Game of Life can generate impressive, complex patterns from just four rules.
Oh Hi (or 0h h1; it doesn’t seem entirely certain) is the latest game in this sort of vein that I’ve come across, and it’s quite glorious. Created by Martin Kool of Q42, and based on an existing logic puzzle called Takuzu (and sometimes known as Binairo), it’s a browser-based HTML5 puzzle that’s a bit like Sudoku, a bit like Threes and a bit like that good old Windows staple, Minesweeper, and it’s eaten into a quite frightful amount of my time over the last couple of days.
Words by Jim McCauley 