“Frus­tra­tion”, a sketch of a 2-player tile place­ment game.

Sup­pose there is a board, divided up into polyg­o­nal tiles of some sort. Around the edges of the board are black and white tiles, fixed in place. The board can be a reg­u­lar tri­an­gu­lar or square tiling, an irreg­u­lar tiling, a Voronoi thing, what­ever. Here’s a tri­an­gu­lar board:

The play­ers decide which of the two will be the Same Player, and which will be the Dif­fer­ent Player. Play­ers take turns col­or­ing one of the uncol­ored (gray) tiles either black or white. Each player can color any gray tile with either color. A player has to color a tile on his turn. When all open tiles are full, the Same Player gets one point for every edge between tiles (includ­ing the per­ma­nent bor­der) where two white tiles or two black tiles meet, and the Dif­fer­ent Player gets one point for every edge where dif­fer­ent col­ors meet.

Refine­ment: In addi­tion to points for edge sim­i­lar­ity or dif­fer­ence, the Same Player gets one addi­tional point for every tile where a clear major­ity of edges are the same, and the Dif­fer­ent Player gets one addi­tional point for every tile where a clear major­ity of edges are dif­fer­ent. So for exam­ple, if the tiles are all square, the only extra points for the Same Player are squares with three or four neigh­bors of the same color, and for the Dif­fer­ent Player only three or four tiles of a dif­fer­ent color.

Is this a thing already? Is it triv­ial? Eas­ily solv­able? Inter­est­ing? Fun?

Later: Here’s a ran­dom board, just to poke around with: