Proelium vs Terminus

The most minimalist strategy game (with the permission of go). Proelium is a turn-based tactical game inspired by classic board games like checkers, go, and mainly the almost forgotten latrones, played in the Roman Empire. A minimalist gameplay system with very few rules to memorize, yet it offers depth and room to develop your own play style. Arrange your pieces, block your opponent’s pieces, and eliminate them to claim victory. Challenge a friend on the same device (the iPad version is optimal for this mode, but it’s also avalaible on iPhone), play against a friend or stranger over the Internet, or try to defeat the AI at three different difficulty levels. In Proelium, there’s only one type of piece, and it can perform only two actions: move and attack. The key is to position your pieces to flank the enemy from at least two sides, blocking them (while avoiding the same fate). Only blocked pieces can be attacked and removed. The interplay of blocks and counterblocks makes Proelium a game of emergent complexity ―easy to learn, but challenging to master. The rules of Proelium symbolize, in an abstact way, the combat between phalanxes in ancient Greece. The result is a dynamic reminiscent of hoplite warfare ―fundamentally positional and defensive.

Terminus is a calm logic puzzle about drawing transit maps. On iPhone Duo, Terminus plays on the outer display as it does on any other iPhone. Open iPhone Duo like a book and a station becomes two pages: the board on one, and on the other a service brief with each line’s progress, every rule on the board and the moves you have made. The gap between the pages sits on the fold, so nothing you touch lies along the crease. The map screen opens out like a book too: Today’s Service on one page, the route map on the other. When iPhone Duo lies flat, the board is at its biggest, with the brief in a column of its own beside it. Fold it, open it or lay it flat mid-station and you carry on from the same move while the clock keeps running. Each map is a small city grid. Drag every coloured line from terminus to terminus, serve each station exactly once, and pass straight through the diamond interchanges so two lines cross, one across and one down. When the whole network clicks into place, the station opens. Every map is machine-proven to have exactly one solution. That changes how it feels: you are never guessing, only deducing. If a route seems forced, it is. Follow the logic and the city untangles. The network keeps changing the rules of the road. The early lines teach the grammar. The later lines each introduce a new working: stations closed for engineering, depots that serve one line only, yards where every train must turn, services of an exact length, tunnels that dive beneath the grid, one-way track, and timetabled stops that must be called in order. The Grand Union Line then brings several of them together on the same board. Every day the network also runs one extra route: Today’s Service. Solve it and stamp the day in your album. Miss a day and nothing is lost. There are no streaks on this railway, only stamps. Made for the commute it depicts: • One-handed, portrait play on iPhone, with the whole game within a thumb’s reach. • On iPad, a poster-sized board when held upright, and the board beside its service brief when turned on its side. • Fully offline. Quiet optional sounds; the mute switch always wins. • No ads, no accounts and no tracking, ever. • Stars reward pace; hints are there when you want a nudge, not the answer. • Progress travels with you through iCloud. • Line patterns mode tells lines apart by texture as well as colour. • Game Center achievements and leaderboards if you want them; the game never depends on them. The Ember Line rides free with ten stations, from a gentle 4×4 to a dense 6×7. The Season Ticket opens thirteen further lines, 156 more stations rising to severe 7×7 networks, and every line surveyed in the future. One fare, forever. Mind the gap between you and your station. It is exactly one line wide.