ABOUT THE GAME ITSELF:

This text adventure is a sequel to my 2021 ParserComp entry Fivebyfivia Delenda Est. It appeared in IFComp 2021, which ran from October 1st to November 15. Its place is still pending. The current binary is based on the November 14th build, which includes a trivial one-line fix to certain obscure calculations.

Abstractly, it explores what you can do with bishops and knights on a compact chessboard. The story is this: it's years since you conquered Fivebyfivia, and Twelvebytwelvia is looking to expand some more. Your country's given your word you won't do anything warlike, and yet ... perhaps diplomacy will work better. Your crazy horse has long since died, and you're not in the shape you used to be in. But some of the neighboring Fourbyfourias have traitors willing to cooperate. Then maybe with them installed (relatively) bloodlessly as puppets, your conquests will be able to resume. There are seven Fourbyfourias. Conquering them all will make your great country square and whole again.

While non-chessplayers should be able to enjoy it (you place a maximum of four people at once,) I'm very much open to ways to make Fourbyfouria more accessible to people who don't play chess.

For the technically curious, the source code is here.

Release 2.0.0 was

Anyone who wants to give me a transcript, you can do so from the zblorb. Type TRANSCRIPT and mail the results to me. (Yes, I'm cold-calling here.)

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