Spot
Not to be confused with Cool Spot, which is another computer game that features the past icon for the Seven Up soft drink, Spot is a simple board game that is perfect for those times when you have a few minutes to kill and don’t want to get into anything to heavy. That is not to say that this game won’t keep your interest for much longer if you really want to master it. On the surface Spot looks to play similar to the board game Othello. While the main objective is the same (finishing with more squares occupied by your color than that of the opponent) the rules of the game are different.
To play spot you are allowed to move one of your color pieces either one or two squares in any direction (or combination of directions) to an unoccupied square. Any occupied squares touching the newly occupied square are transformed into the color of the piece that was just moved there. If a player chooses to move his piece only one square, instead of two, his piece divides and occupies both the originating and destination square after the move. However, if the player moves his piece two squares then the square where he moved from is left vacant. A vacancy like that invites the opponent to move a piece there (if he has an eligible piece) and “capture” all the surrounding squares.
That probably sounds simple enough, right? Not so fast. Another bit of needed strategy can be introduced into the game by letting the game program redefine the board layout so that it is not the perfect square that you are used to. Having to defend and attack an irregular (but symmetrically) shaped board can call for an entirely new strategy each game. That is what keeps this game interesting.
Spot can be played against the computer or another opponent with up to four players per game. Each player will begin with one piece occupying a corner of the board. If you choose to play the computer there are 5 difficulty settings that can be used as you learn to master the game. If you play another live opponent you can use the options screen to set a timer on each move or for the game as a whole.
The instructional manual explains the rules and how to use the options screen to set up another player. It also describes how to reconfigure the game board.
Even though Spot supports VGA the downloaded game will have the EGA option selected because the game would hang every time I tried to use VGA in DOSBox. The game supports many sound cards but will be downloaded with the ADLIB option selected. Run SETUP to reconfigure the video or sound.
Reviewed by: Geezer
