Shove Off

Shove Off is a 1984 game by Hank Atkins, published at Ideal.

The game is played on a 4x4 board. Each player has eight pieces, and there's also 16 neutral pieces.

Rules:

• Initially players place all 16 neutral pieces on the board
• On her turn, the player adds a friendly stone at the board's edge, by pushing all pieces on that row or column (so, the last pieces is pushed off the board)
• however, it is illegal to push off an opponent's piece
• if the player does not have a friendly piece to push (all eight pieces are on the board), then she uses one neutral piece instead
  
• Wins the player that makes a 4 in-a-row orthogonally or diagonally
  

The moku ludeme is quite common, and the pushing element is not original (cf. Overboard). What is different here is that players are unable to push off enemy pieces.

Here are low quality pics of the original rules:

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A similar idea was proposed independently by Steve Bateman, when he posted at rec.games-abstract, in Aug 25, 1995. Here's the message (slighty edited):

I was looking through the games on Richard's PBeM server when I had an idea for a new game, called "Push". I have attached a copy of the rules, and would appreciate any feedback on the game, especially on:
1. Has anyone ever heard of, encountered, played a game like this before?
2. Is the game concept OK - would you want to play a game?
3. How well does it work in two-player, three-player or four-player mode?

The Game of Push
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Description
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Push is a two-, three- or four-player game played on an 8x8 square board, each player playing with counters of a single color. The aim of the game is to have a line of your color appear on the board.

Rules
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1) The board is an 8x8 square, and is empty at the start of the game.

2) The game may be played by two, three or four players.

3) Each player has an unlimited supply of counters of a single color. With two players, player one plays white, player two plays black. With three players, the third player plays red. With four players, the fourth player plays green.

4) Play begins with player one, and proceeds in turn through player(s) two, three and four, then back to one again (and so on).

5) Each player must make one move on their turn (there is NO passing).

6) A move consists of "pushing" a counter onto the board from an edge position. The push may be horizontal, vertical or diagonal, but must be away from the pushing edge toward another edge of the board (so from the top, the push can be toward the right, the bottom or the left - SE, S, or SW on a compass - but cannot be parallel to the edge - E, W - nor away from any other edge - NE, N, NW).

7) "Pushing" a counter onto the board may move other counters already on the board as follows:
  a) If the edge position is empty, then no other counters are moved.
  b) If the edge position is not empty, then all connected counters in the
     direction of the push are moved one square in that direction.
  c) Only connected counters are affected by the push.

8) Any counter pushed off the edge of the board during a move is returned to the player playing that color (there are no captures).

9) After each move, the board is examined for lines (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) of a single color. With two players, the lines must be five counters long, with three or four players, the lines must be four counters long. A player wins when a line of their color appears on the board, as follows:

a) If a player makes a line of their color as a result of their move, that player wins.
b) If a line of another other color is made as a result of the move, then the player playing that color wins.
c) If lines of two or more colors are made at the same time, then the player whose turn comes next wins, starting with the player who made the most recent move (so if player one moves, and makes two lines, one for player three and one for player four, player three wins - players one and two do not have a
line so do not win).

Ins & Outs

Ins & Outs is a 1984 game by Jim Winslow, published at Spear's Games.

The game is played in the following 6x6 board showing a spiral path,

One player starts with four pieces at the center, the other starts with his four pieces at the other extreme of the spiral.

Rules

• The pieces move along the spiral path indicated by arrows in their respective colors.
• A piece can also move backward along this path to free a blocked piece (see blocked pieces below).
• Only one piece may be moved per turn.
• Pieces can only move to empty fields. Fields occupied by another piece are skipped over.
• Two pieces cannot occupy the same field.
• Jumping
• A piece may jump over one or more empty fields along the spiral, as long as the start and end positions lie on the same straight (horizontal or vertical) line (see diagram below).
• Blocked Pieces
• A piece that has no other friendly or opposing pieces in a straight line next to it is considered blocked and cannot move.
• The player who owns that piece may, if it is their turn, move another piece backward to a position where it is again in line with the blocked piece.
• On their next turn, they may then move the formerly blocked piece again.
• The winner is the player who first moves all their pieces to the opponent’s starting fields.
• The final move to a target field does not need to match the exact number of spaces that could have been moved.

The original rules:

diagram caption: the black piece can move over 3 empty spaces

 

Ins & Outs is like a version of Lines-of-Action turned into a race game. A curious mix of old Senet-like games, especially Mehen, and modern ideas (in this case, line-of-sight).

 

Hoppa

Hoppa is a 2005 game by Marino Carpignano, published at Il Fogliaccio degli Astratti # 27.

The game is played on a hexagonal board of edge size of four, initially empty. There are enough stackable bicolor pieces (one color per side).

A stack has a maximum size of three pieces. The topmost piece (the active piece) determines ownership.

The Rules:

• On her turn, the player can either:
• drop a friendly piece on an empty hex
• move a piece onto an adjacent piece or stack with two pieces
  
• An active piece can capture by jumping:
• in a stack of size three, it can perform a long jump (capturing the active pieces of the two next adjacent enemy stacks) or a short jump (capturing the adjacent active piece of an enemy stack)
• in a stack of size two, it can only perform a short jump, and the adjacent stack cannot have size three
• the active piece moves to the immediate next square (that must be empty) without changing color
• the captured active pieces are not removed but instead flip color
• no jumps are allowed over empty hexes or friendly stacks
  
• Wins the player that stalemates the adversary 

In the next diagram stack A can jump to B, C, F, and H. However, it cannot jump to D (no jumps over friendly stacks) nor E (no jumps over empty hexes). The stack north to A cannot capture it, since that stack has size two, and A has size three.

The rules include an extra scoring procedure for multiple matches:

• When the game ends, the number of active pieces (i.e., single pieces and pieces at the top of columns) is counted:
• If the winner has more active pieces than the loser, the final score is the actual count
• If the winner has fewer active pieces than the loser, the final score is 19 to 18 in favor of the winner.

Tri-Trac

Tri-Trac is a 1980 uncredited game, published at Milton Bradley.

The game is played in this board, 

where these pieces are placed,

 

The goal is to place the player's triangular pieces, together with neutral pieces, in order to make a path that connects the two arrows of the same color.

The official rules: 

There are several comments at BGG saying the game is broken, i.e., it is too easy to impose a draw to the adversary. This means Tri-Trac was badly designed and badly tested. It is a shame since the pieces are quite original. The material deserved a better game. 

Closing In

Closing In is a 1979 game by Sid Sackson, published at GAMES #14. 

This is a paper and pencil game similar to games like Press-Ups and Slimetrail, but with more dynamic moves.

The solutions from the puzzles:

click to zoom

The Game of Ancient Kingdoms

The Game of Ancient Kingdoms is a 1975 game by G. Tinley and Francis Tresham, published at Hartland Trefoil Ltd.

This is a boardless game, where players initially drop their tiles to make the playing surface:

Kingdoms can be played up to five players 

Each player has 16 plain tiles, one warrior (the side face) and one King (the full face).

Kingdoms is an early unification game where players, in their turn, swap tiles to try to join all their pieces together.

These are the complete rules:

This is an interesting game that should be better known. The ludeme of using hexagonal tiles as pieces in a boardless arena, predates Hive, the famous tiling Chess-like game. The warrior piece is also a prototypical implementation of a Chess-like piece. 

This is one of the first entries with an unification goal, after 1969's Lines of Action (the first one) and 1973's Cluster (the second one), and published in the same year as Shoulder to Shoulder, another early unification game.

 

Strata5

Strata5 is a 1984 uncredited game, published at Milton Bradley.

The game is played on a 8x8 board with stackable pieces that are able to created complex 3D structures.

Each player initially has six color pieces with a red side and a black side. These pieces also are numbered, each player gets the set of labels {2,2,3,4,5,6}. There's also 32 building blocks with area 2x2, which connect to each other like Lego pieces.

The idea is to build structures by stacking the building blocks up to the height of five levels. The color pieces are able to move within the structure (the number label determine their moving range). The rules are more complex and intertwined including blocking, capturing, and piece flipping ludemes. You can read the original rules here. Another nice and illustrated explanation is found here.

The main problem with this game is the lack of interaction between the players. The board is too big. If one player tries to create a path to get near the opponent, to capture some pieces, this delay is fatal, and the opponent will win by stacking to level five. Some players suggest reducing the playing area to 7x7, which forces structures to interact, giving opportunity for captures.

There is a 2000-word report by Chris Lynd trying to fix the rules of the game. I don't know if this fix produces better gameplay, but it is not a good look for the original design process.