This is the third Macintosh edition of SwampLord released. SwampLord is a strategic one player animated board game. The player, as the SwampLord, controls both the Swamp Creature as well as the set of Claws. There are no timers involved in this game, so take your time in planning your strategy. The object of the game is to defend your Swamp against the mobs of Evil Real Estate Agents (aka EREA).
• Hardware
This version of SwampLord is should work on all Macintosh machines, from the Plus on up. It plays on System 6 and 7, as well as most older systems. SwampLord plays both on monochrome and color monitors.
• Swamp
Each section of Swamp is 16 by 10 squares. Each square is either water (blue or shaded) or land (white). Each board, or portion of the swamp, is randomly created for each game and mob. Your home in the middle of the Swamp is always to the west, or the left of the screen. The plants growing near the shores are there only to delay the greenhouse effect on the planet, and have no effect on the play of the game.
• Swamp Creature
You guide the Swamp Creature. The Swamp Creature can go to any square of land or water that is unoccupied. Place the beacon by clicking on the destination square. The Swamp Creature will then try to reach the beacon using the shortest possible route, using only unoccupied squares.
When the Swamp Creature moves from water to land, the square of water that it steps up from becomes a square of land. Similarly, when It goes back into the water, the last square of land it was on turns to water. The physics involved in this transformation is too involved to be discussed here.
The Swamp Creature is an endangered species. In fact, It is the only one left in the swamp. If you lose your Swamp Creature, You lose your Swamp and the game.
• Evil Real Estate Agents (EREA)
The Evil Real Estate Agents want to develop your swamp to make a few quick bucks. The Agents come in mobs of one to nine individuals. Each EREA will try to move closer to your Swamp Creature each time the Swamp Creature moves, but the Agents will not go into the water. The agents are relatively stupid, and you can predict their moves in reaction to your own.
• Claws
You start the game with a column of nine Claws on the west (left side) of the screen. The Claws are used to capture the EREA that are on land directly to the east (to the right) of the claw. To activate a Claw, click on the Claw.
Claws will only operate on land in a straight west to east (left to right) direction. The strategy of the game is build the horizontal levees and activate the claw when there are one or more EREA on the levee. WARNING: if your Swamp Creature is on the levee when you activate the Claw, you will lose the game. For a practical demonstration of levee building, choose "Demo" from the Game menu.
You may activate each Claw only once per mob.
• Lifeforce
Your Swamp Creature needs a Lifeforce above zero to operate. Your Lifeforce guage is on the left side of the screen. If the Lifeforce falls to zero, the EREA will invade and the game is lost. Each time an Agent moves to a position that is next to the Swamp Creature, Lifeforce will be lost. The amount of Lifeforce drained per EREA is dependent upon the number of Agents left on the board. That is, the last EREA is able to drain much more than if it was just one of nine.
When a Claw gets an EREA, the Lifeforce that was taken by that Agent is regained. When you eliminate the last Agent of a mob, you regain all of your Lifeforce.
• Mob
After a mob of EREA has been removed by the Claws, a new section of the Swamp will appear with a new mob of Agents. The number of Agents in a Mob varies with each Mob, and each game.With each mob removed, you also lose the last Claw used.
• Score
The hats at the bottom of the screen represent the number of EREA left to capture. Eliminate all the hats to win the game.
• New
Start a new game by choosing "New" from the Game menu. Choosing "New" will end the current game, if any.
• Instructions
A brief description of how to play is included with the game.
• Demo
A demonstration of the building of levees to get a mob with the Claws is included. The demo is based upon the playing of an actual game. Choose "Demo" from the Game menu to activate the demo. Click in the Demo window to end the demo before it is done.
• Hall of Mud
Players that have captured all the EREA and won the game can enter their name onto the Hall of Mud. To view previous winners, choose "Hall of Mud" from the Game menu.
• Sound
Sound can be turned off or on by choosing the "Sound" option from the Game menu.
• Quit
Choose "Quit" from the Game menu when you are finished playing SwampLord. Click on the close box (upper left corner) to end the current game. To end then winning and loosing animations, hold down your mouse button a few seconds.
• Water
Changing the Water level will change the probable ratio between the number of water squares and land squares. The Drought level will have considerably more squares of land than the Flood level. You change your initial Water level by choosing your level from the 'Water' menu.
• Strategy Hints
Eliminating mobs of EREA requires two steps: building levees, and luring the Agents onto the levees. When building a levee, it is usually best to work with islands, squares of land that the EREA can't reach. Turn a peninsula into an island early in the game, when possible. The EREA will always move to any square of land that is closer to the Swamp Creature. You can first lure the EREA away from the area that you're building a levee, then lure the Agents onto that levee.
Developing a feel for the game, as well as developing strategies takes time. Enjoy, but beware of the laughing fish.
• Winning
Regardless of what you might think after playing this game many hours, it is possible to win. Compared with the original SwampLord and SwampLord 2, SwampLord 4 is easy to win, mainly because it is posible to win, while the first two versions were simply not designed to win. It is indeed an honour to scratch your name onto the Hall of Mud.
This is a shareware program. If you like and use this program, please send five bucks. If you don't like it, let me know why and I will try to fix it. If you are anywhere in between, send me an anonymous, but colorful post card with the statement, "Laughing fish are eating my furniture, too".
Benn Blincoe
laughing fish
HC 72 Box 27211
Benton, CA 93512
Noncommercial distribution of this shareware program is encouraged. If you pass this program on to friends, please include these instructions. If you pass this program on to people you don't like, don't include these instructions and confuse the heck out of them.
SwampLord has taken over seven years to evolve, starting in BASIC on a TI 99/4A to an Apple //c to a Mac to an IBM compatible in Pascal, and now back to the Mac in Pascal. I expect that SwampLord will continue to evolve both on the Mac and PC platforms. Comments, suggestions, and bug reports are more than welcome.
SwampLord was first released for the Macintosh, and written in BASIC.
SwampLord 2 (version 0.39 04/02/89) was released for the Macintosh. It included several improvements, including a demonstration of how to play.
SwampLord 3 (version 1.70 07/14/90) was released for the PC as a total rewrite in Pascal, with a more graphical interface.
SwampLord 4 (version 1.71 07/31/93) was released for the Macintosh. Written in Pascal, it contained many improvements, including color.
