The Nature Trail game begins with a message requesting the player to enter the length of the trail.
The trail can be any length from 10 to 20 places inclusive. Following this there is a message
requesting the human player to enter their name. The name must be between 1 and 6 characters in
length and not begin or end with a space character. The other player will be the computer.
To determine who has the first turn each player ‘rolls’ a 4-sided dice and the player with the higher
number takes first turn. If the numbers are equal then the dice is rolled again by both players. This
continues until one player has a higher number. Note that the human player ‘rolls’ the dice by
pressing the enter key, but the game automatically ‘rolls’ the dice for the computer player.
The game play begins with both players (human and computer) at the start position (S). The players
take turns to roll a 4-sided dice and move forward the number of places shown by the dice. At each
position along the nature trail there is a random chance of sighting an animal and gaining points
according to the type of animal. Some positions have an action because of a special feature on the
trail. The action involves moving forwards or backwards along the trail. When the player moves to a
position they gather any points for an animal sighting and then follow the special action. The game
ends when the first player reaches the finish position (F). The winner of the game is the player who
has collected the most points.
The following are the game rules:
1. Each player starts the game with zero points.
2. When a player lands on a position on the nature trail they have a 50% chance of sighting an
animal. There are five different animals and there is an equal chance of sighting each type of
animal, but only one animal can be sighted for each turn.