Thanks for the long write-up! And the follow!
Although it seems you’re showing off a clever idea that’s not very functional as a game.
Though it’s never been more true than with this one, a lot of my games fall into that category.
That (and all of the points in the rest of your comment) is actually one of the reasons I’m participating in TriJams. (Along with learning Godot instead of updating my own increasingly horrible made-during-gamejams C++/SDL2 ‘engine’.) I spend so much time in just implementing the bare ideas, and never have any time for polish.
instead of diving straight into a finished game first introduce a game that’s a few moves in
That’s a really nice idea if I would continue with this. But…
playing it in reverse is just harder, and it’s very difficult to tell what makes a good board state from a bad one.
… I don’t think I want to, for those reasons. I enjoyed making it (showing off to myself?), and I’m (as always) very curious what other comments I might get, but that’s about it for this one for me.