TriX: Tic Tac Toe Evolved

Remember solving tic tac toe as a kid? Every game a draw, forever. TriX is the sequel: same 3x3 board, but skill decides who wins. Classic tic tac toe is a fine little game that runs out of secrets fast. Two people who know what they are doing will draw every single time. TriX keeps the part everyone loves, nine cells and a line of three, and changes just enough to bring the logic back. WHAT TRIX ADDS TO TIC TAC TOE • Pieces, not marks. Nine of them: three shapes (circle, diamond, square) in three colors (violet, red, yellow). Every piece carries both attributes at once. • Two ways to make three in a row. A row, column or diagonal wins if its three pieces share a shape, or if they share a color. • You choose which piece to play, not only where to play it. • Both players' pieces count towards every line. You can win with a piece your opponent placed, and you can lose by handing the AI the one it was missing. Nothing on the board is neutral. • One move can close a shape line and a color line at once, and the game tells you when you pull that off. • The board always fills. Nine pieces, nine cells, so every placement is a commitment. HOW TO PLAY • You hold 5 pieces, the AI holds 4, and both hands are face up. No hidden information, no dice, no luck. • You move first, then turns alternate. • Tap a piece and then a cell, or drag the piece onto the board. • You win the instant a line shows three matching shapes or three matching colors, whoever placed them. • You lose the instant the AI completes such a line, so watch what your move opens up. • Read the AI's hand as carefully as your own. Every cell you fill is a cell it cannot use, and every cell you leave is an invitation. EVERY DEAL IS WINNABLE, BY DESIGN Before a deal ever reaches you, an exact solver plays out the whole game tree and keeps the deal only if you have a guaranteed forced win. So when you lose, the win was sitting there and you walked past it. Retry this deal replays the exact same hands so you can go back and find it, or take a new deal and start fresh. DIFFICULTY THAT IS MEASURED, NOT GUESSED Easy, Normal and Hard are not moods. Difficulty is the fraction of your moves that still keep the forced win alive at the tightest moment of the deal. On Hard there is often exactly one correct move, and everything else quietly loses. THE AI DOES NOT MISS Your opponent searches the full game tree and plays perfectly. When it is losing it does not roll over either: it steers towards the lines that leave you the fewest good replies. Beating it feels like solving a puzzle, because that is exactly what it is. WHAT IS NOT IN HERE • No ads. • No in-app purchases. TriX is free, all of it. • No sign-up, no account, no tracking. • It works offline, because the whole game runs on your device. • A tiny download that will not eat your storage. • English only. Portrait or landscape, on a phone, a tablet or a desktop browser. A quick strategy board game for a coffee break, a brain workout in a queue, an offline logic puzzle for when you want to sit and think properly. It is still three in a row. It is just three in a row that finally asks something of you.