Octex Cameron Browne (2008)

Octex is a 3D path-making game for two players.

Rules

Tiles: Two players, White and Blue, share a common pool of ? Octex tiles as shown in Figure 1. Each tile is octagonal, divided into four colours and has a coloured square plug of half thickness centred on each face.

Figure 1.  Front, back and side views of an Octex tile.	Figure 2.  The board.

Start: The board consists on an 5x5 grid of square holes which is initially empty (Figure 2).

Play: Players take turns placing a piece to nestle in either:
            1) An empty board hole, or
            2) The square hole formed where four tiles meet on the same level.

Figure 3 shows an example of a stacking move in which a tile is placed to nestle in the square hole formed by four mutually adjoining tiles. Note that that there is initially a blue path running from top left to bottom right (left) but that the move breaks this path (right).

Figure 3.  White's stacking move breaks the blue path.

Aim: A player wins by forming an orthogonal or diagonal line of three bumps of their colour, such that the bumps at each end are joined by a connected path through same-coloured regions (not including any bumps). If a move achieves this for both players then the mover loses.

For example, Figure 4 (left) shows a vertical line of three Blue bumps, however this line does not win as the bumps at each end are not connected by a bumpless Blue path. Piece a wins for Blue as it joins the end bumps with a bumpless Blue path.

Figure 4.  A non-winning line (left) and a winning line (right).

History

Octex can be played on Richard's PBeM server - check out the help file for more details. Please challenge me (camb) to a game any time.

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Site designed by Cameron Browne © 2007. Last modified 18/7/2007.