Keibot

There is a type of puzzle game that is based on the movement of certain chessmen, knights and queens seem especially popular. Keibot takes this concept and combines it with…Tic Tac Toe.

The strange figures that look as if they came from the Easter Islands move like knights. There are four of each color. At the beginning of the game, they stand in a group in the two opposite corners. Glen Solosky explains what happens then:

There are 3 ways to win Keibot (pronounced Key-bo):

1. Get 3 beads in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally)
2. Capture 3 of your opponent's statues
3. Place all ten of your beads on the board
   (Actually, there is a fourth way to win, but it happens very rarely—trap your opponent so he can't move.)

The statues move like knights in chess (an L-shaped move, two squares horizontally or vertically and then one square perpendicularly). To move a piece, click on its square, then on the destination square. (Version 1.2 introduced a Show Moves option. It is the default, but can be turned off in the Settings dialog box.)

Place your beads by aligning yourself with your opponent, with one square in between—a bead goes in that square.

Capture your opponent's statues by landing on them (except for the last to move—he's safe. He's the one with a shield).

On intermediate and expert levels, the first statue to move can't move on the second round. Also, eight idle rounds (without either a capture or bead placement) results in a draw.

No explanation is given for the strange name. Interesting enough, the copyright notice of this freeware game says 1985, 1995, so I suppose there was a black & white version which however seems to have completely vanished. As far as I know, Keibot is otherwise absolutely unique.

Basically, the game should run on any color Mac with a display of at least 640×480. I tried it out on my Macintosh IIcx, and it was playable, but the graphics took a while to build and didn't display correctly: a large part of what should have been black was white. Besides, if you play it on a 640×480 display, the space needed for the menu will be missing at the bottom.

Download Keibot (234kB)