On the Complexity of 2-Player Packing Games

Abstract

We analyze the computational complexity of two 2-player games involving packing objects into a box. In the first game, players alternate drawing polycubes from a shared pile and placing them into an initially empty box in any available location; the first player who can't place another piece loses. In the second game, there is a fixed sequence of polycubes, and on a player's turn they drop the next piece in through the top of the box, after which it falls until it hits a previously placed piece (as in Tetris); the first player who can't place the next piece loses. We prove that in both games, deciding the outcome under perfect play is PSPACE-complete.