One of the recurring pseudo-arguments in board gaming, is the question „Is XYZ even a game?“. It’s a pseudo-argument, because there is no conclusive list of external markers to make this distinction. Some games are competitive. Some games have no randomness. Some games have no direct interaction. Some games have imperceptibly few decisions points. Just as it is with everything else, you are what you identify as. Turing Machine calls itself a game. It presents itself as a game. So it is a game.

And as can be expected from a game, we are confronted with a task. A task, which at first, seems quite challenging. We’re supposed to identify a numerical three-digit code. To do that, we use the game’s components: punch cards and a thick stack of matrices. The first thing we’ll notice, and fitting with its overall design philosophy, is Turing Machine’s stark minimalism. Everything is reduced to functionality. Even its small handful of visual details, like the type font and sparse use of color, is aimed at simple usability. It’s reasonably easy to figure out how to use the components to find the correct code. Stack three punch cards, place a matrix behind it and look through the one remaining hole to see if you see a green tick or a red cross. Figuring out what that result means, is the first challenge we have to face.

To some extent, every game needs a challenge, in order to qualify as a game. There has to be some hurdle, you have to overcome. A game might consist of nothing but drawing a tile and placing it oon the table to form a landscape. But it’s only when there are tasks tied to it, that the cyclical decisions start to feel like a game. It’s rather unusual that these hurdles in Turing Machine smoothly grow from the level of usability to being at the heart of play.

The first hurdle is to figure out how to interpret the Yes/No-answers the punch cards give us. Once we’ve understood how a combination of three punch cards, a verifier card and a result relate to each other, we go over to the next step. Which valid conclusions can we draw from this, and what does the answer explicitly not tell us? Finally, we need to come up with a new input code by way of punch cards, to test for exactly those bits of information, we’re missing to figure out the solution.

If this all sounds quite cerebral and anything but simple, that’s what Turing Machine is as well. But after a few rounds, Turing Machine pulls you in as some heavier board games do. In the same way that in some games we have to learn to recognize when an action is particularly effective, and when we should just ignore it; Turing Machine also needs us to learn how to “read” it.

Trying to work your way through the chains of reasoning and logical consequence of individual decisions (or in this case information), is exceptionally satisfying. Particularly, once you feel like you are on the right path. Nothing is as addictive as success, and this is particularly true for Turing Machine.

You might assume, this makes Turing Machine a game for more experienced and veteran games. Surprisingly, the group of people who can’t quite warm to this game, are competitive players. Because this is where the game’s design minimalism feels too smooth. It lacks any sense of over-arching structure. There are enough components to test different codes at the same time, sure. But the game ends abruptly as soon as somebody has deduced the correct solution. The problem isn’t the lack of interaction between competing players. It’s that their presence negatively impacts the experience. It draws out the game, while no communication is allowed. Either to not disrupt people’s concentration, or simply because a slip of the tongue might give them an unintended advantage. Competition in Turing Machine is a simple unceremonious comparison between players after each turn.

The cooperative mode is similarly unstructured, but offers one fundamental difference. We are allowed to share what we know, our deductions and our hypothesis as much as we want. This is when Turing Machine feels most like a game. Puzzling things out, coming up with a theory and figuring out which verifiers allow for a definite solution, and which do not, turn a sophisticated logic puzzle into a shared gaming experience. It’s only in its cooperative mode that Turing Machine really shows its full strengths as a social activity. (Something that I’d argue is true of all pure deduction games, but I understand that not everyone shares my position.)

Yet it’s also the unstructured character of its cooperative mode, where Turing Machine doesn’t accommodate the experience of veteran games. Instead of relying on secret information, individual abilities or even communication limits to keep any one player from dominating the group, it’s up to the players themselves to figure out how to best cooperate. Again, the competitive idea of play (“it’s us against the game”) is more of a hindrance than a help. It’s our cooperation, our discussions and the exchange of ideas, that turns the brainteasers of Turing Machine into a fulfilling play experience.

Which unmasks the pseudo-argument, of whether Turing Machine is a game to begin with, for what it truly is: a clinging to outdated ideas about how a game ought to present itself, behave or identify. When Turing Machine is exactly what it says it is: a game. And a really exciting one to boot.