Abstract
WallGo is a recently introduced strategic board game popularized by the 2025 Netflix series The Devil's Plan. Although played on a small 7 x 7 board, its combination of stone movement and wall placement yields high game-tree complexity and intricate strategic interactions. Despite its growing popularity, WallGo remains underexplored.
This paper presents WallZero, an AlphaZero-based agent for the two-player WallGo setting. We introduce tailored action and feature designs to improve playing performance significantly. In the evaluation, WallZero defeats two professional Go players who participated in this study, securing on average 1.98x more territory per game.
Beyond its strength, we use WallZero to assess game fairness and identify key strategies for mastering WallGo. Interestingly, our results show that the opening used in the Netflix series yields a more balanced game.
Our code is available at this link.
Blogger's Review: The study of WallZero not only demonstrates the potential of AI in emerging board games but also provides new insights for in-depth strategy analysis. By leveraging the powerful algorithms of AlphaZero, WallZero effectively enhances both fairness and enjoyment in gameplay, making it a noteworthy development in the field.