Clamber 2026

Clamber is a sophisticated exnihilation game for stacking pieces on a curiously small board. Despite sharing a mechanic with Adere, Escabel and the mobile game 2048, the mechanic was originally devised by me in 2011 and this project is over a decade in the making. I release it to show God's gift of designing finite games in my life. Clamber was made by Corey L. Clark in summer of 2025.

Materials: size 3 hex hex board and an unlimited supply of stackable pieces in two colors

Definitions: Super-group: a maximal set of stacks in one color that can be reached through a series of steps between stacks of that color Subgroup: any such set of stacks where all the stacks are additionally the same height

Gameplay: On your turn either place a singleton (stack of height 1) on the board or make at least one capturing move.

Capturing move: you can capture in one of two ways. Capture an adjacent lower enemy stack by capping it with your piece, removing the entire enemy subgroup to which the stack belonged prior to the capping.

The second way is to capture an equal height stack that is in an adjacent enemy super-group to one of your stacks (once again by capping it with your piece and removing the enemy subgroup to which the stack belonged). When capturing an equal height stack you may compare the newly captured stack, now, to the adjacent enemy super-groups and make an additional capture, reiterating this process as many times as you feel like before concluding your turn.

Forced passing: if you have no available moves on your turn, your turn is automatically skipped over. Passing voluntarily is strictly forbidden

Objective: the objective of Clamber is to leave your opponent without any stacks remaining on the board.

—description from the designer