Tic-Tac-Toe, known to the British as tic-tac-toe, is a famously tedious game that is nevertheless often played by anyone with a sweet wrapper, a pencil and five minutes to spare waiting for any form of public transport. It’s tedious because it is “solved game” the results of which can be safely predicted regardless of where you place your first zero or cross, so that the “perfect” player will at least draw an opponent. Still, it’s played because many people don’t know it’s a solved game – especially teenage children, whom you may want to humiliate using your perfect adult brain because when you were a child, someone did the same to you.
How many twisted adults have been born from the experience of being bullied through the game of tic-tac-toe? We would have been better off without this match. But look! Here’s Tic Tactic to shake things up with a little bit of Balatro.
In this roguelike deck builder, each round of tic-tac-toe is an individual skirmish in the vengeful duck’s quest against the murderous chickens. I don’t have time to explain this assumption because my opponent has just performed a specialized type of cross that sets adjacent zeros on fire.
I’ll take my revenge with nothing that causes earthquakes by shuffling the pieces, and then I’ll play nothing that will restore my health. Yes, Tic Tactic is one of those games that takes a centuries-old concept and asks the question “but what if it was an RPG?” So far we’re getting away with it. I was just playing Itch.io browser demoand I like the transformation of a game I hate into a game I can imagine playing on the tuba.
The trick doesn’t seem to be that Tic Tac Toe has a ton of crazy D&D modifiers. The secret is that when you get a line of three by damaging another player, it doesn’t reset the board. The scoring tiles disappear, leaving spare or opposing tiles in place. So in addition to setting up these three, you have to worry about continuing the game and the usual roguelike matter of saving the most powerful elements for an opportune moment. In any case, these are only very superficial impressions.
Tic Tactic is available now on Itch.io, with the Steam page coming out in the next week or so. I’m writing this before the Steam site launches because I’ll have my hands full next week, but as soon as the link arrives, I’ll throw it into the Maw. There is no release date yet.
