Venables

Venables is a freeware, mouse controlled strategy game that is played either against the computer or as player vs player. It is unusual in that players move their pieces indirectly via something called the ICC - Indirect Color Control grid. The object of the game is to capture an opponent's pieces, if the game reaches a position where both players have just one piece a draw is automatically declared.

The game is played on an 8x8 grid of coloured squares and randomly placed within that grid each player has eight shields. On either side of the main game area are the two 5x5 ICC grids, one for each player. Each cell in an ICC grid contains a coloured arrow pointing to a coloured circle, these are the moves that are available to a player with the arrow showing the colour moved from and the circle the coloured cell moved to. A further twist to the gameplay is that only five of the moves are active at any one time, a central cell and those adjacent to it horizontally & vertically.

When a move is selected, say a move from a green cell to a blue cell, it affects all the player's pieces that can make that move. Once a player makes a move their turn is not necessarily over, they can make further turns unless they either captured an enemy piece or their selected move affected just one of their pieces.

The game plays in a non-resizeable window, it has sound effects and a detailed help file with illustrated examples which opens in a separate window.