╶─╼━━━━━━━━━━━╾─╴
╶╼ G R I D - O ╾╴
╶─╼━━━━━━━━━━━╾─╴
Grid-O is a puzzle game whose objective is somewhat similar to that of
Tetris, except the whole concept is implemented in two dimensions: you
are given series of blocks, and have to place them on board so that
they form a contiguous area of 3x3 tiles. Such areas then disappear
("explode"), giving you score.
I wrote this game mostly to explore Rust programming language.
In the past, I implemented the same concept in Objective C and in Delphi.
The original idea comes from the DOS game Squarez by Adept Software.
(Though I had to spend quite some time hunting around the web to find
how the game was called--it's been a long time!).
Grid-O renders in Unicode, and plays OK on an 80x24 terminal. You do
need Unicode fonts to render properly--the game uses a number of
characters from the "Symbol, Other", especially box drawing
characters, but also superscripts. Make sure you have a font with
decent coverage.
It also means I can include a screen shot in this very README file:
```
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┏━━━┓
┃ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ ┃ ┃ ┃
┃───┏━┯━━━┯━━━┯━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓───┃ ┗━━━┛
┃ ✖ ┠─┼───┼───┼─╴ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┃ │ │ │ . . . . . . . . . . ┏━━━┓ .┏━━━┫───┃ ┏━━━┓
┃ ✖ ┠─┼───┼───┼─╴. . . . . . . . . . .┃ ┃. ┃ ┃ ✖ ┃ ┃ ┃
┃───┃ │ │ │ . . . . . . . . . ┏━━━╋━━━┛ . ┗━━━┫───┃ ┗━━━┛
┃ ✖ ┠─┼───┼───┼─╴ . . . . . . . . .┃ ┃. . . . ┃ ✖ ┃◂████████▋ ▸
┃───┃ ╵ ╵ ╵ . . .┏━━━┓. . . . . ┗━━━┛ . . . .┃───┃Score: 1086
┃ ✖ ┃ . . . . . . ┃ ↯ ┃ . . . . . . . . . . ┃ ✖ ┃Level: 5
┃───┃ . . . . . . ┗━━━╋━━━┓ . . . . . ┏━━━━━━━┓ . ┃───┃
┃ ✖ ┃. . . . . . . . ┃ ┃ . . . . .┃ • │ •³┃ .┃ ✖ ┃◂ ▸
┃───┃ . . . . . . . .┗━━━┛. . . . . ┗━━━┓───┗━━━┫───┃Multi: x1
┃ ✖ ┃ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ┃ │ • ┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┃. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ┃─── ───┃───┃
┃ ✖ ┃ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .┃ │ • ┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┃ .┏━━━━━━━┓ .┏━━━┓. . . . ▴ ▴ . . . ┗━━━━━━━┫───┃
┃ ✖ ┃. ┃ │ ┃. ┃ ┃ . . . .▴ ▴ ▴. . . . . . .┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┃ . ┃─── ───┗━━━┛───┗━━━┓ . ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ . . . . . ┃───┃
┃ ✖ ┃ .┃ │ │ │ - │ ┃ .▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ . . . . . ┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┃. ┃─── ─── ─── ─── ───┃. ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ ▴ .┏━━━┓. ┏━━━┫───┃
┃ ✖ ┃ . ┃ │ │ │ │ ┃ . . ▴ ▴ ▴ . . ┃ ┃ . ┃ ┃ ✖ ┃
┃───┗━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━┻━━━┻━━━┛───┃
┃ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ │ ✖ ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
```
The following screen shot is from in-game help screen listing the
various tile types that you can find in the game:
```
╶─╼━━━━━━━━━━━╾─╴ ┏━━━┓ Picker. Doesn't explode.
╶╼ G R I D - O ╾╴ ┃[ ]┃ Allows picking other tiles.
╶─╼━━━━━━━━━━━╾─╴ ┗━━━┛
┏━━━┓ Plain tiles. When organized ┏━━━━━━━┓ Killer. Kills tiles that
┃ ┃ into a 3x3, explode and ┃ ↯ │ ↯³┃ it touches. On drop,
┗━━━┛ disappear. 1 point. ┗━━━━━━━┛ changes to plain.
┏━━━━━━━┓ Shield tiles. When exploded, ┏━━━┓ Permanent.
┃ • │ •³┃ decrease the number, eventually ┃ ✖ ┃ Never explodes.
┗━━━━━━━┛ change to plain. n+1 points. ┗━━━┛ Kill them!
┏━━━━━━━┓ Centerpiece. Only explode ┏━━━━━━━┓ Plus, Minus. When exploded,
┃ ◉ │ ◉³┃ when 3x3 has a centerpiece ┃ + │ - ┃ change the multiplier.
┗━━━━━━━┛ in the center. 10*n points. ┗━━━━━━━┛ 1 point.
┏━━━━━━━┓ Whopper. Like centerpiece ┏━━━━━━━┓ Flask with Glue and Acid.
┃ ✱ │ ✱³┃ but only explodes 5x5. When ┃ ▿ │ ▴ ┃ Spill contents around
┗━━━━━━━┛ exploded, changes to c-piece ┗━━━━━━━┛ when exploded. 1 point.
with the same number.
30 points.
```