Creating the Hive Mind — Building an AI for the board game Hive
2021/05/01
At the start of 2018, I introduced my team at work to the board game, Hive, which they quickly became enamoured with. If you don’t know anything about Hive, the gist is that it’s a 2 player game where players use pieces that move around the board in unique ways to try to surround their opponent’s queen bee. If you need some additional context, or want to fully learn the rules of the game, it’s on BoardGameGeek.
In early February of that year, I had the idea to create an AI that we could play against, while also making the APIs and tooling surrounding it extensible, so others could eventually create their own AIs as well. Thus, the Hive Mind was born.
Since then, I’ve put countless hours into creating a game engine, a mobile app for iOS, a back end service, and the inklings of an actual AI! In this series of blog posts, I’m hoping to detail some of that process, as well as document more of the process as I continue building the Hive Mind.
Series
Below, I’ve linked each post in this series so you can follow along in order, as each post is published.