How it works
Ghost Grid takes ordinary tic-tac-toe and removes the one thing that makes it a solved game: permanence. You and the bot alternate placing three marks each exactly like the classic game — three in a row during this opening phase wins outright, same as always. But once both sides have placed all three, the board stops holding still. From then on, every turn you don't win with, you're forced to pick up your oldest mark and teleport it to any empty cell, where it becomes your newest. Your opponent does the same with theirs. The board never fills up and never gets stale — it just keeps recycling, three marks a side, forever, until someone lines up three in a row or the game hits its action cap.
That single rule — oldest mark moves, no exceptions, no choosing which piece to sacrifice — is what gives the game its whole character. Every line you build is temporary: the moment you complete two in a row, the clock is already running on how long you get to keep it, because eventually that piece becomes the one you're forced to move away. Both players' current oldest mark renders faded on the board with a soft shimmer, so you always know — for both sides — exactly which piece is about to fade next. There's no hidden information here, just a puzzle of timing.
Play is best-of-three against a bot: three quick games at one difficulty make up a round, and your round score out of 10 comes from that record — a win is worth 10 points, a draw 5, a loss 0, averaged over the three games. A solo warm-up is one round at the difficulty you pick. Daily and Friend Challenges add an easy, medium and hard round into one shared 30-point ladder, with every player facing the same seeded bot decisions.