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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Tiao, A two-player turn-based board game

Hi HN, I built this digital version of Tiao, a two-player turn based strategy board game. Think Checkers meets Go. It's free, runs in the browser, has multiplayer, AI, over the board mode and a lot of other neat things. The source is on GitHub (AGPL). The game was originally designed by my friend Andreas Edmeier. He created the rules and has been playtesting and refining the game design for years. I built the website for it. The core in about 2 weeks using TypeScript, Next.js, Express, Websockets, and MongoDB. Fully dockerized, deployed on a Hetzner VPS with Coolify. Authentication with…

Tiao is a free browser-based digital board game for two players combining elements of checkers and go. Players can compete against each other online, play against AI opponents, or use an over-the-board mode. The game… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1IA
  2. 2

    Thought I would post in celebration of 1 year of my website being online. I've been working on it on and off and currently the website allows users to play Hex, Tumbleweed, Amazons, and Connect 6 against friends or against practice bots. I've been a long time player of some of these games and I felt for a long time that the world could use a few more popular abstract strategy games compared to Chess or Go. If you try it, let me know what you think. I'm always looking for new games or new features to add :)

    2025 · abstractboardgames.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    BreakBase.com. Play your favorite games, with anyone you

    2012 · breakbase.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    I posted once before but wanted to share again because a lot has changed. There's now a fairly strong bot to play against (contributed by a community member) and also correspondence games. The combination of these things helps a bit in finding people to play against.

    Aug 2026 · voronoigo.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5PU
  6. 6MC

    Hey, it's been a long time in the making, but we're finally ready with our public BETA version of our Android application. We're anxiously (and nervously) awaiting your feedback, so please lay it on us. Our biggest fear is hearing nothing. The game is called Super Tic Tac Toe. It's a new take on the old, boring tic tac toe that more often than not ended in a cat's game. The game board is a large tic tac toe board with each square comprised of a smaller tic tac toe board. You and an opponent place your marks on the smaller boards, each move dictating where your opponent may move next (and…

    2012 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Dear Hacker News, I'm kindly asking for your participation in the open beta for my AI-managed mini-games website. Thank you in advance! For a limited time window, I'm setting the all-free feature flag to true. I hope you have a lot of fun exploring the AI's sense for games! Here and there, I tweaked it to help with visual consistency. I would be deeply grateful if you opted into analytics. $2,300 in API tokens... Cheers!

    Jun 2026 · minigames.world · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    A 2D addictive arcade game with 8-bit art style

    2018 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Invite your friends to play checkers with you in real time!

    2016 · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A turn based strategic board game

    2017 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    OLO▲95

    Minimalist multiplayer game of skill and strategy

    2015 · crashgambling.guru · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Coolest strategy game that combines tic-tac-toe and chess

    2017 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Antiyoy▲72

    Addictive turn based strategy game!

    2016 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14CE

    We built ChessBoss at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon this week. It didn’t make the top 10 but I thought Hacker News might think it’s pretty cool. https://devpost.com/software/chess-boss There are these really cool smart chessboards that can suggest moves and track your games... but they’re $400 and weigh 19 pounds. And of course there are apps that can analyze games but tracking and inputting games by hand is a huge pain. Or fully-digital chess apps... but board games are way more fun in real life! We wondered: “why can’t you just do that in software and bring the best…

    2019 · devpost.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Unusual 2-player logic game testing your spatial thinking

    2016 · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    I continue my experiment of transposing classic games onto an irregular grid. I've previously released variants of minesweeper and checkers. And now I'd like to share my variant of Chess. Chess can be a pretty punishing game, but I thought this was nevertheless a way to make it even more challenging by making it trickier to anticipate your opponent, even though both players still have the same information. From the playtests I've done, that challenge is pretty compelling. It also seems to be more fun at 2 people, where both players keep surprising one another.

    2024 · polyreplay.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17FO

    Hello HN, I have started FBG some years ago when I moved to the Bay Area and could not find a simple, cross-platform, no-registration way to play board games with my friends back in my home country. I also wanted to make it simple to create multiplayer board games online for developers in their free time. Shortly after, I found out about boardgame.io with similar goals and decided to join forces with them. It became the engine of our board games, and we focused on publishing/serving them. To be fair with everyone and inspired by Wikipedia, we made the project a non-profit with GPLv3…

    2021 · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Catch all the money for your startup. Demo day game

    2017 · socialarcadeapp.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    A challenging turn based strategy game in your browser.

    2021 · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    A simple board game like tic tac toe, dots, and checkers!

    2020 · bycyril.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Provably fair backgammon with expert AI and analysis

    Aug 2026 · boardgammon.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    agraa▲5

    Ancestral board game-challenge friends in agraa

    Nov 2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23MW

    Link: http://xoxo.cm The idea here was to build a multiplayer game with the lowest possible barrier to entry to get started. That is, no registration, no game setup, as few steps as possible to actually start playing. There's not much substance here right now and there's still a few bugs that need to be hammered out. I'm also thinking of expanding on the idea with some other simple games down the road. Any feedback or suggestions on the concept in general would be much appreciated.

    2011 · xoxo.cm · its alternatives →

  24. 24BA

    Fun puzzle game crafted with unique checker pattern puzzles generated by AI

    2023 · patternplay.io · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →