Snorkels

Snorkels is a variation of AtariGo on a 7x7 board for (even) younger children. It was made by nestorgames, but now appears to be discontinued.

Instead of stones it works with green and purple tiles with a nice smiling face and tubes (snorkels) on them and instead of playing on the intersections you just play in the square.

Another difference to AtariGo is that it uses a pie rule: The first play of the game is always made with the purple Snorkels. One player places the first purple Snorkel on an empty square; the other player then decides whether to play as purple or green. The green player continues the game.

From the snorkel website:

Meet the Snorkels, the friendly aliens from Deneb Gamma IV. One player will control the green Snorkels, and the other player will control the purple Snorkels. Each turn, you place one of your Snorkel pieces on the board. Snorkels never move once they are placed.

Each Snorkel has four breathing tubes coming out of its body. If all of its tubes get blocked by the walls at the edge of the board or by enemy Snorkels, it passes out from lack of air and gets captured by the enemy. The first player to be captured loses the game.

A common practice among Go educators, especially those who work with kids, is to begin by teaching a somewhat simpler variant of Go known as The Capture Game. Snorkels is an adaptation of The capture game by Mark Engelberg?, who will donate his share of the proceeds to the American Go Foundation.

Links:

Nestorgames website http://www.nestorgames.com/snorkels_detail.html

Snorkels at BoardGameGeek: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72794/snorkels

Rules: pdf http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/63z6vh12as/SNORKELS_EN.pdf

Comments

willemien: I think these simple changes makes the game much easier and safer for younger players. (no stones who move from one intersection to another, less chance of mistaking stones with sweets) But the price is quite high. (it is so much cheaper to make it yourself)

fool: ...and anyway it looks like it is discontinued now (Jan 2023). The link is dead and there is no more reference to it on the Nestorgames website.