Conundrum is an abstract hexagonal based board game, where the object is to negate all of the colored tiles by placing them next to each other. This game was inspired by all of those hexagonal floor tiles you commonly find on bathroom floors. Despite the high level of abstraction, Conundrum is very simple to play, and it can be very addictive for any puzzle gamer.
******* THE PLOT THICKENS *******
Why does everyone insist on having plots to go with games? This game is entirely abstract, with no humanly explainable practical purpose for the game's design. Wnyway, does anyone want a plot for this game? Well, here is one anyway...
One day, you decide to tile your bathroom floor, so it's off to the hardware store for a couple of boxes of tiles and a few other things. You get home, open up the boxes, and discover that you have some kind of cannabalistic vampire tiles, and a box of exploding tiles. You decide to go ahead and lay the tiles on the floor. Of course, since this is a game, the tiles can't seem to leave each other alone, and they start draining the colors from one another. Anyway, it's back to the hardware store, where the person at the returns counter takes one look at your evil little tiles, and runs away, screaming in terror. Obviously, you are going to be stuck with them, so you take them home and proceed with destroying them, using the exploding tiles. Oh yeah, did I mention that when you destroy the tiles, you get bonus objects. Well, this is when you discover that there never was any plot in the first place. This is rather good, since who wants to think about cannabalistic vampire floor tiles.
******* INSTRUCTIONS *******
Well, First off, the ESC key will end a current game and bring you to the main control panel. The tilde "~" key will also do this, since if you read the Mangled Fenders docs, someone broke their ESC key, and I thought it would be nice to support them (and I am going to milk this for every bit of publicity I can :).
The main control panel will let you quit the game, and go to where ever you started the game from. It will also let you select the round to start at. You can start at the early rounds, to get the hang of the game, or go directly to one of the later rounds, and get a bonus score of 100,000 points per 10 rounds you jump. The game changes subtly from an easy, simplified game, to a difficult, complex game.
Once you start, you will have 10 seconds to place a tile on the board, or the game ends. The tiles range from 1 to 10, each having it's own color configuration. The number on the tile is the number of negations that must be done on it. Tiles must be negated by placing them next to each other. The game starts with 6 negations per tile. A tile can be negated from any position adjasent to another tile, up to the number of negations allowed, or to the numbers on the lower of the tiles.
The number of tile types is limited at first, so as not to confuse you, but at regular intervals through out the game, you are given more tiles to work with, as well as exploding tiles.
Exploding tiles destroy everything in a given pattern, centered on where you click to drop the tile. Exploding tiles destroy themselves, and convert any colored tiles they destroy into bonus objects that may be picked up by dropping tiles on them. Bonus objects will be collected when completing the round, so it is not necessary to collect them manually. Exploding tiles become available at round 18, and remain until the current game ends.
Bonus objects: These range from 500-3000 points, using conventions in slot machines for weighing the scores. In fact, the objects were designed for a slot machine game I made a couple of years ago, although it had neat features, I didn't release it since all you did was press a start button and watch the 5 spinners go either horizontally or vertically. I decided to through out the purple thing, since no one really wants to see it anyway.
Bonus rounds: There are bonus rounds at every 10th round, starting at round 5. You cannot lose the game in bonus rounds, and you are only given one type of tile for solving the round. In a bonus round, you are given all 6 negations, to make it a bit easier. If you complete a bonus round by negating all the colored tiles, then you get a bonus of 50,000 points.
You lose the game if you fill up the board with tiles, or if you wait more than 10 seconds in placing a tile. If your score is high enough, you get to enter your name into the high score table. The top 15 high scores are saved, as well as 15 letters for each name. Most people's names fit in a 15 letter space, which is a whole lot better than the former 3 initial standard. Hopefully, the 3 letter standard will be abolished forever, as well as the 1 point scoring for ANY object on the screen, common on arcade games where the programmers were afraid to exceed the maximum integer value.
The high scores in Conundrum go up to 327,680,000. This is done with 2 variables, one for numbers from 0-9999, and another for the 0-32768*10000. Of course, the nature of the game may only let you get about 5 million before you get bored (if the game doesn't kill you off first). Remember, score inflation doesn't hurt the economy, so go ahead and get 5 million or more.
The snowflake thing that responds to mouse movement is your pointer, since this game is mouse controlled, and there was no sane way of making it a joystick game (people making this type of game joystick only should be mangled, quickly).
******* AWESOME OFFER *******
Hopefully by now, everyone knows about my fleet of games- Incinerator, Checkers Conquest, Mangled Fenders, and Castle Incinerator. This entire fleet of games, including Conundrum, is available directly from me for $10!!!!!!! This is truely awesome!!! All five of these games will be the full versions in this offer. This offer can't be matched by anyone else, since I am the only one authorized to distribute the full versions of my games. This offer will be available from now on, and it is the greatest offer for full games there may ever be. Just think, at an average of $2 per game, nothing can rival this!
Distribution of Incinerware: Incinerware cannot be distributed on CDs (Conundrum may be put on the Aminet CD, or CD's of recognized Amiga magazines, but no others). Incinerware may be distributed in other ways, including on 3.5" floppy disks, on Internet, and BBS's, with the stipulations that the games are known by all to be the demo or unregistered, weakened versions. Also people can't be greedy, and I own the compilation copyright on my fleet of games, as well as the individual copyrights on each of the games, and on all of their supporting files, documents, and icons.
I reserve all rights, including the right to make exceptions and to modify any part of this to fit my designs. I also reserve the right to declare future versions of any games as fully commercial, or whatever else I think of :) :D
