GAME for MS-DOS.

• TitleThe title screen.
• PlayThe group under the cursor shows its size and points.
• Hint (H)"Save the chicks for last: this board can be cleared."
• Potion (F8)Three a game, 100 points each.
• How to play (F1)The rules and keys, a key press away.
• Watch GAME play (W)"GAME is saving the kennels for last."

On any VGA card, in 16 colours

GAME shows 640 x 480 in 256 colours where the card has VESA, and otherwise in 16 colours, which every VGA card has. Options says which it is using, and GAME /16 forces 16 colours on any PC.

• Title, 16 coloursThe same screen on a plain VGA card.
• Play, 16 coloursThe board in 16 colours.
• Options (F11)Board size, sound and the screen mode.

• A 386 or later. A 486 or better if you want hints and "Watch GAME play" to come quickly.
• At least 4 MB of memory.
• A VGA screen. GAME shows 640 x 480 in 256 colours where the card has VESA (almost every SVGA card from the mid 1990s on), and otherwise in 16 colours, which every VGA card has.
• MS-DOS 5 or later, PC DOS, FreeDOS, or DOSBox on a modern computer.
• A mouse and its DOS driver (MOUSE.COM or similar) if you want one. The keyboard alone plays everything.
• About 1 MB of disk space.

GAME has been tested in an emulated 486 (QEMU) running PC DOS, in both 256 and 16 colours. It has not yet been run on a real PC110.

C:
MD \GAME
   (copy the files into C:\GAME)
CD \GAME
GAME

MOUNT C ~/DOS
C:
CD GAME
GAME

GAME keeps three small files of its own beside GAME.EXE: GAME.CFG for your settings, GAME.HI for your score tables and GAME.RES for an unfinished game, brought back next time. To remove GAME, delete the GAME folder. It changes nothing else on your computer.

The board is 9 rows of 19 tiles, as in 1995. Take groups of two or more touching tiles of the same kind: side by side or one above the other, not corner to corner. Tiles above fall into the gaps, and when a column is emptied, the columns to its right close up. The game ends when no group of two is left.

Scoring, as the 1995 original kept it

• Every tile on the board costs 1 point, so a new game starts at -171.
• A group of n tiles scores (n - 2) x (n - 2), and its tiles stop costing you, so two tiles are worth 2, five are worth 14, ten 74.
• Clear every tile of a kind for a bonus: 100 for the first kind, then 200, 400, 800 and 1600. The last kind to go empties the board.
• Undo takes back a move, as often as you like, for 10 points each.
• A potion turns one tile into a kind chosen at random, for 100 points. You have 3 a game. It can come out the same, and it cannot be undone.

The secret of a big score: choose one kind to keep and leave it alone. Clear the others around it, pairs and all, then take the kept kind last, once it has come together. Grabbing big groups early costs you the bonuses.

A good score earns a place in the top 20, with your name, how many undos it took and the date. A game in which you asked for a hint, or one that GAME played, is not scored. The board can be 9 x 19, the original, or 9 x 16, from Options; each size has its own score table.

• The original "GAME" (1995): IBM Japan and Lios Systems, for PersonaWare on the IBM PC110.
• This version: Seamus Waldron, 2014 and 2026, with artwork by Will Saunders (Studio Raygun) from the 2014 iPhone game.
• Built with DJGPP. CWSDPMI is copyright Charles W. Sandmann and is distributed unmodified. You have the right to its source code and to updates: both are at http://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2misc/ (csdpmi7s.zip is the source, csdpmi7b.zip the programs).

GAME for phones, tablets and other computers is at samegame.co.uk, where you can also play it in your browser. Questions to [email protected].

The PC110 exhibit also has the 2001 web version of GAME, playable in your browser, and the story of PersonaWare, where GAME began.