v 0.4.1
by Sergey "Segal" Galyonkin
1. Game concepts
2. Modes
3. Settings
4. Custom levels
5. Legal Info
6. About author
This is Filler-like game for up to 4 players. Your main goal is to capture cells on field: as lot, as possible.
You should tap a field with color you want to capture, or outside the game field if you want to skip turn. Capture prizes ($ sign) to get more points. Don't be afraid of bombs - they can slow you down, but they are useful for blowing through walls and can get you more points for recapturing exploded cells. Optional surprizes (turned off by default) has 30% chance to become a prize. If not, it'll explode, so take care.
Note the black cells on some levels: you can't capture them, but you can explode them. I think it makes game more interesting. For all you classic "Filler" lovers I've included empty level with the game.
And last, but not least are teleports. If you capture one cell of this type, you automatically capture all cells with teleport sign of the same color. Useful if you need to get to distant place.
You can assign a human or computer player to any of 4 starting positions. You can disable any player, or all of them - I haven't wrote a check for this yet. If there is more than two human players at the same time, current player is highlighted red in score table (bottom of the screen). Please note, that players are counted clockwise: first in top left corner, second in top right corner, third in bottom right corner and fourth in bottom left corner. And if game writes a message regarding player #3 it always means player in bottom right corner, even if you have only two players in game.
There two modes in this game: Quick game and Campaign. In quick game you play one fast game on one selected level. It is good when you don't have much time. By default Square Heads starts in Quick game mode.
Campaign is set of different levels which you'll play one by one. Your score is accumulated from level to level, and between stages you'll see current rankings. Winning player is marked with yellow color.
I think, you can understand game options by yourself, so I'll explain only some of them.
AI level The higher - the better. But note, that it requires processor strength, so if you experience slowdowns during game, set it to Medium.
Surpizes If turned on, surprizes (? mark) will be randomly added to the field. Suprize has a 30% to become a prize and 70% to become a bomb. Turned off by default.
Unique colors If this mode is selected, you can't capture color that is already taken by another player. It adds some strategy to this instant-click gameplay: you can make obstacles to other players by capturing colors, they want. I recommend, that in this mode you keep number of colors in game at least two more, than players. Unique colors turned on by default.
Show captured color If turned on, you'll see color that user capturedinstead of texture on his field. Useful, but maybe confusing sometimes.
Enable sounds Self-explanatory.
Random level If turned on, game will select a random level every time you press a Quick game, ignoring your level settings.
You can create a custom levels and campaigns and share them with your friends. To do this, you need to edit levels.txt and campaigns.txt in game directory. Check the examples, it is pretty self-explanatory.
This game is completely free. You can distribute it if you keep original archive untouched. I mean, just don't remove me from credits and don't alter this file and you're free to redistribute this program.
This was written by Serge "Segal" Galyonkin (segal@gamemag.ru).
I'm really a journalist, now working as editor in ukrainian magazine "Domashniy PK" (PC for Home). Ten years ago I wrote Square Heads for ZX-Spectrum, later I've recoded it for MS Windows. I was wondering, why noone ported it to Pocket PC, so I've decided to do it myself. Please excuse my style of programming - I'm not a programmer, you know :)
Additional graphics was made by Alexey "Gafs" Gafiulov (dr_gafs@mail.ru)
You can download latest version of Square Heads for Pocket PC on my site at http://gamemag.ru/ppc