Chronometry Garden - Beta

A personal work-in-progress exercise. A geometrically abstract game where player needs only a single key to play. Designed for hotseat multiplayer where up to 4 players may compete. Acquire points while strategically denying opponents opportunities. Be resourceful in the paths you choose to take, and look out for sneaky backdoor thieves.

If you need to quit or exit a screen at any time, use the [ESC] key.

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Specs

• Geometrically abstract look
  
• Single-key game allowing strategic thinking
  
• Basic multiplayer hotseat option
  
• Freeware, Beta
  
• Last modified 12 Sept 2011

Developer Notes:
This was meant to be an exercise in better understanding game mechanics abstractly than anything else. It is work-in-progress and I'm not sure if I may finish it.

To start, I was interested in using just a single key for a game. Most of such games I have experienced are action-oriented ones, the sort where you push a single key to produce a single action like jumping or shooting. When I came across Nitrome's Onekey, I realized that a single key didn't necessarily mean you had to control only your player piece, but you could control the objects in the environment instead. This would allow the player then to produce different types of actions, depending on where the character was at that particular point of time.

So inspired by this, I wanted to figure out ways to allow strategic thinking for the player. After all, a single key no longer seemed to be as restrictive as I had assumed initially.

As an addition to this, I decided to go geometrically abstract. I would place little focus on narrative and representational elements (things like characters and fictional worlds for instance) so I could focus more on the mechanics themselves.

The whole game uses a single key (per player), even in the game menus. There's a single player tutorial (or "campaign", if you like) that introduces you all the game mechanics and features. There's a multiplayer hotseat option, which unfortunately currently only allows 4 players (not more than or less than -- exactly 4) so you can try it out with friends. If you want to play less than 4 players, just leave the unused tokens as they are.