Dodo Jam is a very simple game. Move directly or diagonally forward to a neighboring, empty cell.
If you can't move, you win. That's all there is to it.
Dodo Jam is a robust game. There's no discernable advantage in moving first, or second. There's
no way to gain the upper hand and ride it to the finish. There are no known "solutions". You can adopt
an aggressive strategy and quickly win. Or an aggressive strategy can backfire.
I prefer to play Dodo Jam in real time. The opening game is fast and light. The first
several moves essentially serve to set up the board for a fresh midgame. The end can come quickly if
opposing armies jam up against one another. Or the end can be pushed back if a player opens a channel
for the enemy to pass through. Games can be short, long, or anywhere in between. There are moments of
tension and drama. It's a tightrope balancing act. You might be on the verge of losing, but manage to
open a channel, open up the game, and have another shot at winning. It's usually a close finish. It comes
down to some subtle positional and tempo calculations. There are strategies that can succeed, but there are
also counter strategies.
The app is very flexible. You can play human vs human, human vs AI (with choice of
first player), or AI vs AI (and watch the AI play against itself). You can change the difficulty level
at any time during play. You can back up through the move history at any time and play it forward
again. You can single step through the move history or continuously rewind/replay it. Having backed up to a point
earlier in the game, you can play it out differently from that point.
There are five difficulty levels. At level 1, the AI plays randomly. So you should be able to beat level
1 at least 50% of the time. Level 2 is somewhat difficult. With practice, you may beat level 2 about 20% of
the time. Level 5? I think you'd have to be very talented to beat level 5. I never have, though I beat
level 4 once.
Dodo Jam uses the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm. The number of iterations for the various levels are,
respectively: 1, 250, 1000, 4000, 16000. Using a Samsung S21, level 5 takes about 10 seconds per move. And
of course the easier levels play faster. For you, it will play faster or slower depending on how modern your
phone is.