A few years ago I found a game called Pendulous on a shareware CD-ROM. I played it a lot of times because I found it very funny. It was very easy to learn and play.
Unfortunatly the game became was not improved and the last release is dated 1995. So I decided to make a game very similar to the original to improve the concept and make a good turn-based strategy game.
The game is based on territorial conquest. Every turn every player gains points for each square of territory (sectors) owned and supplied by one of his cities (bases). Your target is to have the most points at the and of the turn.
Alternatively you can conquer all opponents cities and became the only survived player in the scenario.
The board is divided into a lot of square sectors, which rappresent the battlefield. Each square si connected with the eight squares surrounding him. There are different type of sectors: barrier sectors, territory sectors and base sectors.
Territory and base sectors are owned by a player and are colored with his color. Both can be conquested by other players.
Base sectors have their own source, but territory must be supplied to get points. A base sector supplies to all sectors connected to it directly and indirectly.
If a territory is unsupplied it will became death. Death territory gives no points and will be conquested automatically by other players.
Territory sectors can contain a unit.
All sectors have a defense value (except death sectors). Territory has a defense value of 2. Base sectors has a defense of 25 and adds 5 defense points to all surrounding sectors.
If a territory has an unit on it the defense value rise to 15 and surrounding sectors defense increses by 5.
The barrier sectors are rappresented by blue portions of the board. They represent barriers such as lakes, rivers and oceans. No action can take place on the barrier areas. These areas play an important part in the strategies. They block supplied paths.
Bases that have water as any of the surrounding squares are port bases. Port bases allow barrier crossings to take place to any coastal square on the same body of water as long as barrier crossings are enabled for the scenario being played.
Units are the only active element of this game. Units can be on the board or in the reserve. You can move units from reserve to board ore viceversa while you have at leats one resource point. To move a unit on the board you have to pick it and put it in the reserve and later take it from the reserve and put it on a other position on the board.
The sum of the number of units on the board and in reserve is limited
Units have a defensive and a offensive use.
Units have rise the territory's defense from 2 to 15 and adds 5 defense points to all surrounding sectors. A unit near a base increases the base defense value from 25 to 30. Two units give the base a defense of 35 points, and so on. So you can use units to defend critical zones of the board such as bases and paths.
You can attack only after the setup turn (turn 0) and you can attack only opponent sectors next to any of your supplied sector.
Units are used to attack the opponents. A unit has a attack value of 10, but you can increse this value placing other units next to the attacked sector (+5 for each unit). Each base next to the attacked sector increases the attack value by 3.
Naval attacks (by barrier crossing) have always an attack value of 2.
The attack and the defense values can be changed by the unit effectiveness values which reppresent the quality of your units. Poor units will have more problems to conquer and defend that good units because their attack/defense values will fall. The unit effectiveness value is a global setting, so the change is for all units of a given player.
The first turn is a setup turn. You can position your units in your territory and no resources are used, so use this turn to best position your units in offensive and defensive way.
For each turn each player gets units and resources, depending on the scenario settings. He also gets units and resources from bases, and points. More bases give more units and resources.
Every turn you can attack you opponent or better displace your units for increase your defense or both things, is up to you.
At the and of last turn the player with most points wins. But when all bases are owned by one player the game is over before the last turn and this player wins.
After you started the program, press on the START GAME button. Now select an existing scenario or saved game from the list and press OKAY.
To navigate the board move the mouse on one of the outer sectors. The board will scroll in that direction.
Every time attack/defense information are showed: the current turn, the current player name, the number of units in reserve and the remaining resources. The attack, defense and success values are showed if you put the mouse pointer on a sector. The own sectors have only a defense value. Opposing sectors have a attack value only if attackable.
To put a unit on the board from the reserve, point the mouse pointer where you want to put it and click the left mouse button. To get the unit back in the reserve re-click on it. To attack a opposing sector click it. Remember that all put/get operations requires one resource point and that to put a unit on the board you need a unit in the reserve.
In the main game window press NEXT TURN to end your turn. A window will appear, waiting for the next player. If the last turn is reached the winner is declared and a report will appear.
Press WORLD MAP to see a global view of the board, usefull in many situations. The white square shows the current main view. Press BACK when finished.
The REPORT button shows a detailed screen of the situation: the Scenario Settings, the Players' Status and a Rank window. Press DONE when finished. Details will be explained in the Editor mode section of this guide.
SAVE GAME saves the game status to continue playing later. Press the button and a save window will appear. Select one of the save files that already exist or insert a new file name. Extensions are automatically added.
Reaching last turn or conquering all bases the game is over, the winner showed and the report window opened.
Press SCENARIO EDITOR in the main game window to start editing a scenario.
In the first screen you can edit the scenario and players settings.
Press LOAD to load an existing scenario. Press SAVE to save the current scenario. QUIT returns to the main game screen. The MAP EDITOR opens the scenario map editor.
Press EXIT to exit the game.
Press PREVIOUS and NEXT to scroll throu players.
The COPY TO NEXT, COPY TO REST and COPY TO ALL buttons can help in the parameter insertion process.
Here you can directly edit the board or generate a random board.
To manually edit the board select the sector type and a player from the right. Then use your mouse to draw the scenario.
See what you are doing pressing the WORLD MAP button (the save as in Play Mode).
Press DONE when you're finished.
The randomly generate a board press MAP SETTINGS. Here you can insert the number of cities for each player and how many barriers have to be drawn. If you want a different board each time you play check the AUTOGENERATE box and press OKAY.
If you want a new board press GENERATE MAP.
This game is FREEWARE. What does it mean? That you can freely distribute it, however you want, but without editing the single files. You can add some if you want.
You can request me the source code of this game whenever you want at <selfesteem@virgilio.it>