The Story Before The Code
Tic Tac - Tic Tac - Tic Tac.... The mechanical kitchen clock is ticking while it smells like cabbage rolls and mashed potatoes. The radio plays German Schlager music, and from another room, I hear my grandpa arguing with a German TV host. I am sitting at the kitchen table playing Tic Tac Toe on paper with my lovely grandma. I doubt she lost so often without cheating. This happened many times in my early childhood when my grandparents took care of me to let my parents breathe, or just so we could share time together.
Later, I discovered Connect 4 (here in Germany "Vier gewinnt") as my new favorite game and battled my brother countless times until falling asleep. He never let me win, though.
Then one day in the mid 90s, my dad brought home one of the first (still not very affordable) personal computers, and suddenly everything changed. My brother got sucked into DOS and later Windows gaming, and I followed his example even though I was just too young to understand some games. We had countless floppy disks, computer magazines with gaming CDs, and walkthrough/cheat books floating around in our room, but there was still something very big to happen soon.
The internet became a thing, and I was addicted to designing my Myspace page, writing in chat rooms, playing browser games, and reading Wikipedia. The days with simple but fun physical games slowly faded into the background. Sad? No - maybe some nostalgia hitting while writing this, but:
Look At Us!
After the internet came, I kind of forgot about Tic Tac Toe on paper until a few weeks (or maybe even months) ago. Because then I started preparing the small digital pre-Christmas gift, I am writing this post for: Playing my childhood games on the Magi network - 100% free! Let me introduce:
- Ōkinoko Ināro -
This is an on-chain dual player game collection focused on classic “in-a-row” games. That's where the awesome name is coming from ;) All games are turn-based, deterministic, and run directly on the Magi chain.
You can battle other Hivers in:
- Tic Tac Toe
- Tic Tac Toe 5 (4 in a row wins)
- Connect Four / Vier gewinnt
- Gomoku (exactly 5 in a row wins)
- Gomoku Freestyle (5 or more in a row wins)
- Squava (4 in a row wins - 3 in a row loses)
Playing the Games
You can play directly in the browser via: ▶️ Okinoko.io ◀️
But don't you leave now - I have something important to share!
There are Christmas Bonus Gifts!
I have defined some special occurrences/milestones in the game loop, and the first one who reaches such an event will be given 1 HBD. I reserved 20 HBD in total for this giveaway.
There are no visuals for these events, so do not search or wait for them + I will make the gifting manually based on logs, and I will do reputation / multi-account checks, so do not try to cheat ;)
Simply play the game with your main account and get surprised with some extra funds in your Magi wallet! But hurry up because 01.01.26 is the deadline for these prizes. The remaining pot will go to 
I hope that Okinoko.io is self-explanatory, but since I see this thing with developer goggles, I will now give you a short introduction about the platform and some details about the games. This weekend I am also going to share a video explaining it again for the "non-reading people" and to spread the word even more.
Connect Wallet
After opening Okinoko.io, you will be greeted with a terminal-style cyberpunkish console application. Welcome to the terminal! All terminal containers are movable/resizable + there is a small menu at the top right corner, where you can discover other visual and auditory settings. Try them out!
To interact with the Magi network, you'll need a Hive account - this is an easy one I guess ^^ Simply log in with Keychain/HiveAuth and get the ball rolling!
Select / Create a Game
After getting lost in the visuals (and probably disabling sound ^^), your next step is to focus again(!) and click on "Enter >". You will land in the contract / function select screen.
On the left are all currently supported contracts, and by clicking on them, you will see functionalities on the right. Ināro and ShinDAO do have special screens, tho.
Our gaming contract is split into various game types. Select one and click on "Next >".
If you open a game type the tab switches automatically to where you probably want to go. With no active game, you will land in the lobby; when there is no game waiting for a player, you will automatically land on the "create" screen.
Here you can set up a (1) name for the game (keep empty when you want a low-RC-transaction) (2) the optional bet, and (3) the optional FMP costs. After filling the inputs (or not), you can hit (4) "Create Game >" and sign the transaction with your wallet.
Speaking of wallet: There is a small but still visible (i) icon next to the amount input field. This will open an important pop-up - read it and think about it ;) (more on that below)
Play the Game
Well, the games are super simple, so you are probably going to know how to play them. (1) Place your field - (2) Send your move to the chain.
There is always a little hint on the left of the board about what goal each game has and when you will lose. Additionally to this you can see whose turn it is and the complete history of the game so far.
As mentioned below: The Gomoku Swap2 opening is a bit more complex if you are new to it. In this case, you are going to find more details about the state the game is in and what has to be done to continue. Read the paragraph "Fairness First (And Why It Matters)" - you got this!
Resign / Timeout
(1) In case you can see your downfall and don't want to watch the winner make their final move, you can resign early. That will save you both time and RC. Tip: Use the resign function if nobody joined your game yet to get your bet back from the contract.
(2) If your opponent is afk for more than 7 days, simply claim the timeout. This makes you automatically the winner of the game, and you will receive the prize pool if present.
Notifications
There's no need to check the game contract every day because you'll receive notifications when something happens in one of your games on your favorite Hive frontend! (mine is ecency btw ;) )
I thought this is a pretty neat way to remind you of your games, even though each notification cost me 0.001 HIVE. I think it is worth having, and maybe someone of you wants to donate some HIVE to
Leaderboard / History
For obvious reasons, I have added a leaderboard which is currently split into two different perspectives: "All time" and the more prominent "Current Season". The latter gets nulled every quarter of the year.
Obviously, this is not done at all yet. I will change the season to match actual seasons, and I envision special - maybe sponsored - events and a few more KPIs. For now, the leaderboard has enough potential to keep players engaged and wanting to move up the list.
The history currently is only a list of your games and the outcome. I am planning to visualize the final board setup and more, but that has to wait until next year.
Check your RC
Your Magi RC is important for executing smart contracts, and that's what we do with every step of the game loop, from creating (~2 RC) to making moves (~0.8 RC), and for the final move (~1.5 RC), you will always need your Resource Credits. RC is refilled automatically on Magi based on your current HBD balance, and Hive users have a bonus of 5 RC by default.
I recommend that you put some HBD into your Magi Wallet if you want to interact with contracts on a regular basis. 5-10 HBD is already enough to have a decent gaming experience and for using my other contracts like the Ōkinoko Esukurō formally known and described in detail on my blog as Escrow or the Ōkinoko ShinDAO I am going to cover soon in a separate post.
TX / Blocks Monitor
Especially in the dev phase of the past few weeks, I needed a way to check transactions without leaving my browser tab. I recommend vsc.techcoderx.com for more details, but this simple display was enough for my use case.
That's why I have created and kept this terminal console. There is a list of transactions, block production, and some Magi witness information. In the near future, I am probably going to add some more features to this console.
About Betting (Optional, Always)
While building this, I obviously thought about gambling and had some moral doubts there, but I decided to add it.
The truth is: Web3 games often need financial incentives to take off and stay interesting in these fast-paced times. So I decided on the simple rule that bets are fully optional. I even thought about adding user-specific time limits on betting games, but we are all adults (okay - most of us here) so do what you wanna do. I took the time to add a small (i) icon next to the amount inputs and almost everywhere the word "bet" is shown.
Most of the gambling sites benefit financially from addictive behaviour - Ōkinoko does not: There is no rake, no fee, and no beneficiary in any way for me. Winner takes all. Draws split the pot. That's it!
Fairness First (And Why It Matters)
After adding the initial Tic Tac Toe and Connect 4, my next step was obvious: find more games that follow the same simple 2D in-a-row idea, and I got to the list we have today.
While researching Gomoku, I went deep into old forums and articles discussing fairness. Gomoku (and all the other games on our list) has a well-known imbalance in favor of the first mover. That's why serious tournaments use a special opening rule called Swap2 - and yes, that is fully implemented here. Swap2 removes the usual first-move advantage by adding some initial moves/decisions for both players. It’s a bit more complex, but totally worth it:
- The first player puts 2 black (*) and 1 white (@) stones anywhere on the board
- The second player has 3 options:
- stay with their color
- swap colors
- put 2 more stones and let the opponent choose their colour
The game details will tell you what to do - so don't worry!
F(irst)M(ove)P(urchase)
All the other games do have fewer fields, so this opening is not a way, but after some thinking, I came up with another fairness mechanism: the First Move Purchase.
If a game includes a bet, the creator of the game can optionally define what the first move is worth to them and offer that to the potential joiner. If the joining player decides to buy the FMP, they will automatically become the first mover in the game. The price goes 100% to the creator, not to me. I think this is a pretty clean and honest way to balance things 😉
Especially for games with bets, balancing and making these games as fair as possible from the ground up, is super important.
The Smart Contract (High Level)
There is a single smart contract deployed on the Magi chain (this is probably version 5 or so lol). It handles everything:
- game creation
- joining games
- validating moves
- detecting wins, draws, resigns, and timeouts
- handling optional bets and payouts
- sending events for a beta indexer
All moves are validated by the contract itself. No server decides anything. If something breaks, it breaks for everyone equally, but I doubt that it will do. See the unit tests about what was covered with every iteration, and trust me - I have made at least 50 games in different configurations - It was never the contract that broke, and that's the only really important component of all. Everything essential happens directly inside the contract, while the frontend and the beta indexer exist to make things easier to use. If you want to get crazy, you can even play the games with the keychain playground lol
The contract is verified with commit afdbf40 on-chain (see tab "Source Code" of the contract) and linked to my public GitHub repository.
Free, Really Free
- Not a single coin goes into my pockets
- No fees, no rake, no funny business
- Everything (including my source code) is free to use
If you want to support me, my wallet will appreciate every little donation!
And if you have smart contract ideas, my Discord is always open for new ideas!
What’s Next
The multi-DAO contract called Ōkinoko ShinDAO is already live (as [beta].
I didn't want to mix both topics into one post as I'm proud of both projects for very different reasons, and I think each one deserves its own space.
Final Words
I can’t offer you a bounty...
But you’ll get a very warm thank you in the name of the community ❤️
