Description

Resolve is a connection game for two players, Black and White, with sufficient black and white stones. Players take turns placing and swapping stones on the intersecting points of a square grid (with side lengths of either 5, 9, 13, or 19) which is initially empty. Passing is forbidden. Same-colored stones with orthogonal adjacency are connected. The game is over when a player wins by connecting their designated sides of the board with a single group of connected stones of their color, at any time during their turn or their opponent's turn. Cutting stones are four stones in the following generic crosscut configuration:

OX
XO

1. Place a stone of your color on an empty point. If that stone creates a crosscut, swap it with different adjacent enemy stones that share a crosscut with it, until that stone is no longer part of a crosscut.
2. Choose a stone of your color that is part of a crosscut, and use it to resolve crosscuts as in 1) . Then place a stone of your color on an empty point, if possible.

Resolve was designed by Alek Erickson in July 2020, and the rules were eventually finalized through critical discussions and play testing with Dale Walton and Luis Bolaños Mures. The game was partly inspired by Michal Zapawa's swap mechanic from Slyde. The original idea for swapping stones to resolve crosscuts can be traced to Phil Leduc's Thruway and Bill Taylor's Swapway as early as 2008, but the "resolving stone" mechanic, where a single stone gets serially swapped to fix cuts in Resolve is novel.

—description from the designer