Cat Herders: The Cat Herding Game of Herding Cats

Nine cats have escaped into the park. They’re grumpy and would prefer you leave them alone. Nonetheless, you employ a team of animal control agents and your job is to round up the cats. You win by nabbing five of them.

Cat Herders is a luckless, 2-player combinatorial game, designed to be an elegant simulation (an evocative simulation using a minimum of rules).

The game is played on a hex grid. The central dilemma is that, while your goal is to capture cats by moving your herders to next to them, when you move a herder next to a cat, the cat runs away. The only way to capture a cat is approach it at just the right angle and surround it, before your opponent does. It's tricky.

A good analogy for the feel of play: it's a bit like a multi-player version of chat noir.

Rules, design background, and an example game can be found here.