Two players occupy board area by changing their field's color. The player who captured more than half the board wins.
This is a clone of the two-player browser game Area, written in Python.
Download the ready-for-use release for your operating system.
Clone the source to your local file system with
git clone https://github.com/fricklerhandwerk/area
Install dependencies with
pip install -r requirements.txt ./area
and run the game with
area
If you do not use homebrew Python (or don't know what this is), proceed exactly as with Linux.
Otherwise before following Linux instructions install wxPython via homebrew with
brew install wxpython
The reason is that wxpython installed via pip will require a "framework build" of Python, which homebrew does not provide, preventing you from starting the graphical interface.
To control the game, press the NUM keys displayed or click the appropriate player's color buttons.
BACKSPACE (DEL on Ubuntu) resets the game.
ESC quits the game.
The player who first occupies at least half the board wins.
You need to install this game on your computer.
This has some advantages. It loads and runs much faster than the original, which must be downloaded each time you play and is encapsuled in your browser. You can also modify the source code and improve it if you like.
You need an actual person next to you to play it.
Other than that, the game is somewhat simpler behind the scenes. It doesn't count rounds and a player cannot give up. Just reset the game.
Also it doesn't have any sounds that indicate which player took the lead. This should be obvious from the score bars.
If you don't like to share a mouse or trackpad, just press the according keyboard key to choose a color.
Probably the most notable difference concerns game mechanics. Your score takes all enclosed areas into account. That is, parts of the board that are not reachable for your opponent, since they are surrounded by your area, belong to you, even if you have not colored them yet.
There are actually four modes for handling enclosed areas, which you can set in the source code:
- don't count (original behavior)
- only count to determine if player has already won
- count as score (default)
- color immediately
To provide the game for people not familiar with Python or the command line or not wanting to install dependencies separately, it is possible to package the game as a single executable file.
Make sure py2app is installed and you are in the source directory.
Then in the command line, enter
python setup.py py2app
After this in dist you will have Area.app, which can be distributed and started like any other app by double clicking the app icon.
The game uses color identifiers such as "red" or "green", which are subject to interpretation, but easy to read in the source. Also there are no font settings used, hence key strings on buttons appear in the system default font. Therefore the game may look very different on different operating systems or distributions.
It may be appropriate to fix appearance with numerical color codes.
Please submit packaging and installation instructions for Windows!