Blazing Games - Ultimate Retro Project - Volume 4 - Episode 35

Ultimate Retro Project
Episode 39 Classic Dots

Overview

Dots is one of those pen and paper games that I use to play when I was in elementary school. The game is very simple. You take a piece of paper and make a grid of dots on the paper (or you could just use graph paper if you have some). Players then alternate turns drawing horizontal or vertical lines between adjacent dots. The goal is to create 1 unit by 1 unit squares. Completing a square earns you that square and another turn. If you plan things out well, you could end up competing a long run of squares! Once all the possible lines have been completed, the number of squares each person owns is counted and the person with the most squares wins the game.

Playing the Game

When you start the game you decide how big the board is going to be. The bigger the board the longer the game. You are then asked if player 1 and 2 are human. Choosing no for either player will make that player computer controlled. You can have both players be controlled by the computer in which the computer will proceed to play the game against itself. If you are new to the game this might be a good way to get a feel for the game.

Once the game has started, you need to enter your move using the format dcr where d is the direction of the line (h for horizontal v for vertical) c is the column and r is the row. There should be no spaces between the three values.

Behind the Game

What fascinates me about this game is that it is essentially a maze game except instead of solving a maze by finding a way through it the players are trying to build the longest route they can while trying to prevent the other player from exploiting the route.