Weekend Game

I bumped into this game lately. In fact, i remember playing an identical game somewhere before, but i never saw a 2-player version. It's a fast turn-based game played on a checkered board. The squares come in two colors and nine values: each is rated from one to nine, while one color indicates the value is positive and the other color indicates a negative. At the beginning of a game a row is chosen randomly. The first player chooses a square in this row, and the value is added or substracted from his points total. The chosen square disappears. Now the second player has to choose a square from the column of the square chosen by the first player. Alternating turns, the first player is limited to picking squares from the row of the previous move and the second player is limited to picking them from the column of the previous move.

The players move over the board like that, each pulling and planning towards a route that will reward him with maximum positive points and penalize the opponent with maximum negative points. The winner is the player with more points when there are no more legal moves to make. Confused? Just play it.

A multiplayer version will have a tight time control, about 10-15 seconds for a move (and a legal square is chosen randomly if no move is made during that period). You can also build in a Marathon mode where the game doesn't end after one match, but new boards keep appearing until one of the players reaches a specified point goal, or his point total drops below 1. You can enchance the game experience by adding a visual representation of ths players' respective points. This depends on the theme you choose - for example, a tower for each player that gets constructed when you earn positive points and demolished when you collect negative points, or a man that gets fatter and thinner, or a pile of treasure that gets richer and poorer. It should, in any case, allow anyone looking to see at a glance who's in the lead.