Gooey Atoms

How to play

First of all, you select at least ONE human player (you) and optionally you can change the name from e.g. "Player 1" to your name. Select at least one of the girls. You can play matches of 1 vs 1, but also 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 3. Four players can play against each other, but at least ONE of them must be a human player.

You start. You see a 8x8 grid: this is the game board. Click on one of the fields to place an atom of your colour in it. Next the other players will take a turn and do the same. You can't put atoms in a field that's occupied by another player's atom. You can only place an atom into an empty field, or one where you already have one or more atoms.

Each field has a limited capacity for atoms. You know how many atoms will "breach" that capacity by counting how many adjacent fields that location has. For example: The top-left corner field has ONE field to its right and ONE field below it. That's 2 adjacent fields. Placing 2 atoms in the top-left corner is TOO MUCH, which will cause it to explode. The border fields have three adjacent fields and the fields in the middle have four. Placing 4 atoms somewhere in a field in the middle will cause the atoms to explode.

When the atoms in a field explode, they will jump to the adjacent fields equally, and be added to whatever atoms may already be in there. Also, if the atoms in the adjacent fields weren't yours, they will change to your colour and become yours. This is a great way to 'steal' atoms from your opponents and win field. Note, that if atoms jump to an adjacent field where there was already the maximum allowed amount of atoms, it will the atoms in THAT field to explode as well and this can cause quite a big chain reaction across the board.

The goal of the game is to wipe your opponent off the board. If you conquer all their fields then they are out of the game and lost the round. This may be harder than it sounds, and especially when the amounts of atoms in the game increases the game may become more and more unpredictable! On one moment you may have but a few atoms left, and one explosion later you command almost the entire playing field... if atoms surpass the total of about 120 the chance on an "eternal explosion" chain is likely to happen (because of the dynamics and soft limitations of the amount of atoms can freely move around on the board without chaining chain reactions forever) and the player who starts THAT chain wins the game, obviously.

If this is all a bit too much to take in, feel free to just select 2 human players for your first game, and place atoms, experimenting a bit how it all works before you take on the girls.