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Partickles is an original, computerised, strategy board-game. It is played on a hexagonal grid, with hexagonal playing pieces (called partickles). Like chess, the playing pieces have varied abilities, and like draughts (checkers) they can combine to create more powerful pieces. Unlike those traditional games, none of the pieces are removed from the board. It is a race to cross the central line, rather than a battle. Here's a quarter-sized view of the program running in a Netscape browser: 
The game element is provided by the tension between spending turns building combined partickles (that can do more and move further, but will need to be unpacked later) and moving existing partickles to better positions. Two people can play against each other, or one person can play against the computer. The computer can also play against itself. The program is a stand-alone application rather than an applet, though it can be run from a browser. It had a previous incarnation in a C version written for the Acorn Archimedes, and was described by a user as, "better than chess but easier to learn". The new version has been written entirely in JAVA, and has better graphics, sound and full undo/redo facilities. It also has demo, replay and extensive help options. A short version of the instructions for playing Partickles, is available from the Play now and Download pages. |
to the main Partickles page