MarkSteere wrote:Flippy games are generally not as interesting,
You said a mouthful: only "generally", and mainly because most existing tile flipping games, notably Reversi, are too tactical. On the contrary, Loose is very strategic.
MarkSteere wrote:especially if they're awkward
Well, I hope you won't take it personal, but, come to that, I'd say red stones are far more awkward. They're too obviously a means to an end, and you even said they were an "aesthetic Hiroshima". What makes you think that Loose would fit in that rather apocalyptic category?
MarkSteere wrote:and totally Go dependent.
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean that it's similar to Go, then Redstone is clearly more Go dependent than Loose. In the latter, the "looser" capturing rules define the dynamic character of its tactics and introduce an entirely new set of life and death situations, not to mention tesuji.
This said, if I like Redstone despite its awkwardness is precisely because it's so similar to Go, as you already know. I honestly can't see how this is suddenly a drawback when it comes to Loose, if that's what you were trying to say.
MarkSteere wrote:[Tile flipping] makes the design process easier and it shows.
By the same token, one might say that there's nothing easier, if you want your game to be finite, than forcing players to drop a permanent stone when making a move with the potential to eventually cause a cycle. Almost any game can be made finite with this rule (chess, draughts, Lines of Action...) and I'm sure most of the resulting games, though hardly elegant, would be interesting to play, just like Redstone. In my opinion, the mere fact that Redstone and Loose use "easy" rules to ensure finitude doesn't make them any more or less worthy.
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