Creeper (1995)

Overview

Selection #4 of The Games Collection by Pin International.

Creeper is an abstract strategy game which belongs in the same family as Hex/Twixt. That is, two players attempt to link two sides of the board with a chain of pieces.

Players: 2 only. One plays black, the other white. The Bits:

16 pawns, 8 black and 8 white. 32 "Othello" disks, i.e. black one side and white on the other. A board made up of a 6×6 square grid of octagons.

The game: Although the spaces on the board are octagonal, the main playing pieces ( the pawns ) are placed and played in the squares that are formed where the corners of the octagons meet. On his/her turn, the player may move one of their 8 pawns. A move may consist of leaping diagonally over an octagon, or a simple move between one octagon and the next in a straight line, or finally a pawn may capture an opponents` pawn by jumping over it a la checkers/draughts.

In the first case, if a pawn makes the diagonal jump one of two actions may take place: if the octagon is empty, one of the disks is played inside it, with the players` colour uppermost. Alternatively, if the octagon is occupied by an opponents` disk, this disk is flipped over to show the opposite side (and therefore colour). The winner is the first player to link two specific diagonally opposed corners ( black must link top left to bottom right and white top right to bottom left), with a continuous chain of their colour disks. Only orthogonal links count, not diagonal.