Rush Hour (board game)

Rush Hour is a thinking game and Puzzle for a player (from about 8 years ), which won several awards. It was developed in the late 1970s by Japanese game designer Nob Yoshigahara ( 1936-2004 ). In the trade in 1996, it first in the United States. Manufacturer is the company ThinkFun Inc., the German version is sold by HCM Kinzel.

Gameplay

The game consists of a 6 × 6 boxes large play box (plastic), a red car, which must be freed from a traffic jam ( two fields in size ), as well as eleven blocking cars ( two fields) and four blocking trucks (three fields) in different colors. To play facilities include 40 task cards, which are housed in a built- in game board drawer. First, a number of vehicles to be placed against the field, as specified on the job card. The task now is to maneuver the red car through maneuvering of vehicles for the (single ) output back. The red car, as well as the blocking vehicles, may thereby be moved exclusively in their respective forward or reverse direction, ie a vehicle may be moved either horizontally or vertically only. No vehicle shall skip another. Can the red car without prejudice to finally drive out the exit, the problem is solved. The other " blocking " vehicles may meanwhile not leave the pitch.

Rush Hour promotes - in addition to the ability to concentrate - the logical, in particular the recursive thinking and problem solving skills. The tasks of the easiest difficulty, in some few moves to solve quickly, while the most difficult tasks require more than 40 Rangieroperationen. The solution of each task is shown on the back of the relevant task card. Commercially three expansion sets with additional task cards are available.

Game variations

Multiple players can play against each other, if one counts the number of moves made ​​, which goes beyond the minimum necessary number of turns as penalty points.

Meanwhile, Rush Hour is available on the internet in a Java applet and a Flash version that you can play for free using a web browser, as well as a mobile app.

Theoretical and algorithmic complexity results

The question of whether an n × n grid generalized game has a solution, is a PSPACE -complete decision problem. Mark Stamp et al. showed that the level of difficulty of the 40 included rush hour tasks with the minimum required number of correlated traits. The most difficult in this sense launch configuration or task for Rush Hour requires 93 steps.