People use fast, goal-directed simulation to reason about novel games

Understand

People can evaluate features of problems and their potential solutions well before we can effectively solve them.

• When considering a game we have never played, for instance, we might infer whether it is likely to be challenging, fair, or fun simply from hearing the game rules, prior to deciding whether to invest time in learning the game or trying to play it well.
• Many studies of game play have focused on optimality and expertise, characterizing how people and computational models play based on moderate to extensive search and after playing a game dozens (if not thousands or millions) of times.
• Here, we study how people reason about a range of simple but novel Connect-N style board games.