Super Tock

How it plays

Simple enough to learn in a minute.

Each player has four marbles. Everyone is dealt five cards, and on your turn you play one and move as it says. Bring all four marbles once round the board and into your home lane before anyone else does. With four players you can play two against two, and partners win together.

AceBring a marble out, or move 1

KingBring a marble out, or move 13

QueenMove 12

JackMove 11, or swap places with an opponent’s marble

2 to 10Move that many spaces

No card in your hand can be played? You discard the hand and wait for the next deal. A marble on its owner’s starting space, or in a home lane, can’t be caught.

The Jack changes the race

Instead of moving, the Jack swaps one of your marbles with any opponent’s marble on the ring. Send yours to the front, drag theirs back, or snatch a spot just ahead of a rival. Every marble you can swap lights up.

And there’s the shortcut: a marble on a gold-marked space can jump into heaven, the middle hole, with an Ace, 10 or King, and out again at another gold space across the board.

The home stretch

Getting in takes care. Your home lane is four holes that you must fill exactly, and a marble in it can’t jump over another. The one in front blocks the one behind, so the order you bring them in matters.

Here three orange marbles are already in the lane and the fourth is on its way, with the Five of Clubs picked to move it. Green and yellow have marbles home too: the race is on.

Your way

Set the table how you like it.

Two, three or four players, with the computer taking every seat you don’t. The game saves itself after every move and is waiting when you come back.

Players and partners

Play one to one, three-way, or four around the board. With four, you can team up: partners sit opposite each other and win together.

Easy or Normal

Normal opponents look a move ahead and weigh up the danger to their marbles. Easy ones play a random move now and then. There’s a Hint button for when you’re stuck.

Five optional rules

• A 4 moves a marble back
• A 5 moves an opponent’s marble
• A 7 can be split between marbles
• A 10 makes the next player discard
• A King catches every marble in its path

Online

Play with friends over the internet.

Make a room, share the link or the five-letter code, and sit down together. Computers fill any seat nobody takes, so you can play with one friend or three.

• Make a room and pick the players, teams, level and optional rules, or join one with its code.
• The web version’s Copy invitation gives a link that asks a friend for nothing but a name.
• Click a free seat to sit there. Your own seat is always at the bottom of your screen.
• If your connection drops, or you close the window, reopen the game and you’re back in the same seat. Use Leave to hand your seat to a computer.
• The browser, Linux and Windows versions all play together in the same rooms.

Anywhere

On a phone, a tablet or a desktop.

The whole game is drawn on one canvas that fits any window, so the table rearranges itself for a tall phone as easily as a wide monitor.

Tap a card, tap a marble that lights up, tap where it goes. A marble that’s the only one able to move is picked for you, and so is a spot only one marble can reach.

• In the browser, nothing to install. Once loaded it plays offline. On an iPad or iPhone, use Share, then Add to Home Screen, to keep it like an app.
• Sound from tocks, tinks and a victory jingle, all made in code. The speaker button (or the M key) turns it off.
• Linux and Windows programs have their own window and the same game, saved in the same way.

For sysops and callers

It runs as a BBS door, too.

Super Tock comes with a door program for bulletin board systems. Callers play in plain ANSI text on an 80 by 24 screen: the same game, the same rules, against the computer or online against everyone else.

• Reads DOOR32.SYS, DOOR.SYS or DORINFO1.DEF.
• Works over a pseudo-terminal, standard input and output, or a telnet socket, on Linux and on Windows.
• Each caller has a saved game of their own, and a caller who hangs up comes back to the same game.
• Writes nothing but ASCII, so it suits any terminal.

The door has been tried with test drop files, not yet under a real BBS program. If you run one and would like to try it, the first report is very welcome.

Super Tock door, in a terminal