Chain Reaction (aka Critical Mass, aka Atoms) is an addictive,
multi-player 'board' game. It's easy to learn to play. There is a
computer player (for 2 player games only).
Players take turns to add units (blobs) of their colour to either
an empty cell or a cell they already occupy.
Once the number of blobs in a cell equals the number of
neighbouring cells - 2 in a corner, 3 along an edge and 4
elsewhere - the blobs 'explode', adding 1 blob to each neighbour
and leaving the original cell empty.
The neigbouring cell may then have enough blobs to explode as
well - making their neigbours explode, and so on - a chain
reaction.
Any blobs affected by the chain reaction change colour to that of
the person making the move - this is how other player's cells are
taken.
Wipe out your opponent(s) and win - eventually someone is going to
win because the total number of blobs increases by 1 with each
move, gradually filling the board.
Examples
Here are some pictures showing the basic
principles, an opening move (attack) and an explanation of 'traps'.
Features
Provides a high-quality computer player (for a single opponent).
Locks keyboard and mouse controls individually for each player.
Players can stick with their favourite colour when the order of
play is changed.
Sound can be turned on and off during a game (for both samples and
beeps).
Background
This game was originally shown to me on the
Atari ST
by Stephen Broumley when we were studying
Computer Science at
The University of Sheffield
(1990-1993). Stephen drew the original blobs for me and I've since
added more shading to them.
I managed to track down a copy of
the ST version
and play it on the
WinSTon
emulator, (although
Steem might be more
accessible). It was written by Stephen Taylor and Colin Whitehead
and released as shareware, based on a previous game called "Atoms".
I wrote my MS-DOS version
(reaction.exe, 79 K) from scratch in
Stony Brook Modula-2, but no longer have the
source (it was on one of my many hundreds of floppies, now lost
forever). I have now rewritten it to be better than ever before.
In April 2003, Chain Reaction appeared in
issue 29 of Linux Magazine
(PDF, 323 K). The article is
now out-of-date.
Brian Damgaard provided the computer
player in August 2003 and it was fully integrated by November 2003.