What is it?
Gameplay
While Passage Plus by Michael Wehr (programming), Michael Rössler (graphics) and Alexander Baum (music) is clearly based on Ishido, which has always been popular in Germany, there are some significant changes in gameplay, mainly neutral and semi-neutral stones, bombs, the ability to give back unconvenient stones, and the scoring system.
Special Stones
The stones with the gray crosses are neutral. You can put any stone next to any side of it. You start the game with one neutral stone at a random position of the otherwise empty 12×8 playing field. There are also semi-neutral stones, those where one or more arms of the cross are colored. You can put only stones of the matching next to the colored arms.
While in classic Ishido, the game is over as soon as a stone turns up that does not fit anywhere on the board, you can simply give it back in Passage Plus. You can even give it back if it would fit somewhere, but it will cost you three bonus points. A stone that is given back goes to a random place in the stack and will thus turn up again later.
Bombs appear at irregular intervals. When used, they remove one stone of the player's choice. They can be given back without a penalty. The game also occasionally removes a random stone on its own, which can be annoying or helpful.
Points and Scoring
Bonus points have nothing to do with scoring. They are a penalty system, and a way to end the game. You start out with 30 bonus points. If you run out of bonus points, the game is over. Giving back a stone that would fit costs you three points. Trying to put a stone where it doesn't fit points. There is no way to regain bonus points.
Score points are gained by placing stones. Unlike classic Ishido and
Shogatsu, the main goal is not to place a
stone amidst four previously placed stones (the definition of an
Ishido
), but to form passages, complete rows or columns, hence
the name of the game. A stone that completes both a column and a row
scores the highest number of points.
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| Stone with one neighbor | 5 |
| Stone with two neighbors | 10 |
| Stone with three neighbors | 20 |
| Stone with four neighbors | 40 |
| Short passage (column) | 75 |
| Long passage (row) | 100 |
| Double passage | 200 |
Variants
When you start a new game with F2, you are presented with a small window with nine buttons. From left to right, the columns represent the basic gameplay variants:
- Classic: The game as described above.
- Light: Goal is to place stones on all the marked fields. Stones are random, they can appear multiple times or not at all. There is a time limit for each level.
- Special: Stones that form a passage are removed. As in light, there is an infinite number of stones.
The rows represent the timing variants:
- Standard (crossed-out stopwatch): No time limit and no time bonus for the individual moves.
- Zeitbonus (stopwatch): If you place a stone in less than five seconds, you get up to 99 extra points. Standard points are doubled in this variant.
- Blitz (lightning symbol): Same as Zeitbonus, but after the five seconds the next stone is shown and one bonus point is lost.
Interface
Passage Plus is completely in German, with no option to choose another language. Don't let that stop you, text isn't all too relevant for this game. You place stones by left-clicking on the place you want them, and give them back by right-clicking anywhere (this makes Passage Plus, along with Tetris Jr. PC, one of the very few 16-bit Windows games to use the right mouse key).
You can start a new game with F2, or by selecting the first option
of the Spiel
(game) menu. Under
Optionen
, you can choose two stonesets
(Steinsatz
) and the music. Under Extras
,
you can choose if the game runs fullscreen (Vollbild
)
or not.
Graphics
Passage Plus has seperate graphics for 16 and 256 colors, something that, though definitely a very good idea, wasn't done all that often. I haven't checked out the 16-color graphics yet, but you can see them in the help file, and they look quite good.
If you play it on a screen larger than 640×480, you can choose between playing in a window and fullscreen, the latter being the default setting. In fullscreen, the rest of the screen is filled with a quite pleasing, quiet texture, and the main window gets an additional four pixel border which gives a 3D impression, an effect I haven't seen with any other game.
There are two tilesets to choose from, Passage and Neogeo. Neogeo has simple abstract symbols and I'm not quite sure how it got its name, Passage has icons of various means of transportations throughout the ages: a hanseatic cog and an ocean liner, a biplane and a Jumbo Jet. Occasionally Michael Rössler shows a delightful predilection for the bizarre: the bicycle is a penny-farthing with a huge front wheel as they were popular in the 1870s and 80s, and the railroad engine is a 6-2-0 Crampton, an originally English construction that for a while in the mid-19th century was popular for pulling express trains in the US, France and southern Germany.
