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Epic Funhouse

A game for the piecepack by Ron and Marty Hale-Evans
Version 1.0.1, 12 January 2004
Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, Ron and Marty Hale-Evans
One player, 60 minutes
Equipment needed: one standard piecepack

The Story So Far

So you're on a three-day "vacation" from your crummy "job" as software developer for a crummy "Silicon Trailer Park" startup, and because you can't afford a "trip" to "Europe", you've sampled most of what the crummy little swamp town of Rolando, Florida has for sale. You've (yawn) fed the squid at WetWorld, seen the 3D Gigantimax remake of A Brief History of Time on the Cosmological Studios Tour, and visited a couple of "orange groves". (Since global warming kicked in and most citrus farming moved to Newfoundland, "orange grove" is a code word here for "chicken ranch", which is itself a code word for. . . But this is a family feature.)

Rolando's biggest attraction is EisnerLand (named after the great cartoonist, of course, although due to a groundbreaking 2005 trademark law decision, he had to change his name). EisnerLand is known worldwide as "The Magic Duchy", and thanks to intensive MPRIAA lobbying, may soon become a real duchy (the Mouse That Roared, you might say). Until now, you've managed to pass the duchy every day of your trip to Rolando, but today some unnameable force draws you toward its turnstiles. Could it be Fate?

Inside EisnerLand, it's hot, sweaty, and mobbed with FunSeekers. Colas are $10 a pop, and ice costs $3 extra. APRICOT Center is a pit, of course, but the crowds of FunSeekers inexorably hustle you into the main park, toward a creepy mansion decorated with whimsical gravestones. A sign reads,

EPIC FUNHOUSE
Your home for epic fun!
But can you find your way out?

Har har, you think, but a thick fist seizes your wrist. Oh, no -- it's a FunFinder!

"We just need your thumbprint on this form," he says, crushing your thumb painfully into an ink pad. Underneath the clause signing your life savings over to EisnerCorp "in case of accident", you see another clause indemnifying the corporation against any "decapitation, mental anguish, and/or putting his/her eye out that FUNSEEKER may encounter in FUNHOUSE during his/her otherwise enjoyable visit."

You have just time to squeak, "Decapitation?" before the FunFinder grabs your face with five meaty fingers and shoves you backward into a dark, sloping tunnel. Looks like you just became the hero of this epic. . .

Introduction

Epic Funhouse is an interlocking suite of solitaire games representing a trip through a funhouse with stops in six rooms. The rooms are designed to be played together in order, especially since the setup for each is affected by how you play the previous game. However, with a little ingenuity, each game can also be played separately.

Since each room's game depends on the game in the previous room, you may want to read the full rules of Epic Funhouse before you start. You should at least read the full rules for each room when you start it. Be sure to read the Transition section for each game, so that you are aware of what aspects of the current room you will need to preserve for the next room.

Don't despair if you do badly at Epic Funhouse the first time you play. As you play, you will learn not only how to play the individual games better, but also how to set up the next game in the sequence to maximize your chances of scoring well. The Strategy section at the end of the rules gives strategy hints for each game and for the skillful setup of the next.

You will score yourself in each room. The perfect score for each room and for the Funhouse as a whole is zero. Your score for the entire Funhouse is the sum of your scores for the individual rooms.

Game Ace: Slide Jam

As your eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, you see that this sloping tunnel is actually a slide into the depths of the Funhouse. You try to claw your way back up, but the door is bolted. The only way out is through, but there's a slide jam: a throng of screaming children, mommies, and daddies that blocks your way. You'll have to clear the gridlock by popping FunSeeker families of three off of the slide, one family at a time. . .

Goal

Clear as many tiles as possible off the board.

Setup

Randomly lay out all of the piecepack tiles face down, in a grid four wide by six high. Leave some room between the tiles, as you will be sliding them around. Flip the tiles face-up again (in place), and make sure they are oriented so that you can read them.

Play

To clear tiles from the board, select "families" of three orthogonally or diagonally adjacent tiles in numerical sequence. Sequences can run in any direction; this is similar to the way words are found in the game Boggle. See Figure 1 for examples.

Numerical sequence of the tiles runs null, ace, 2, 3, 4, 5. Thus, removing null, ace, and 2 of any suits is acceptable; because in this game the sequence "wraps around", it is also acceptable to remove 4, 5, and null, or 5, null, and ace. (However, see the Strategy section.)

After you remove a family of tiles, you must slide all the tiles remaining on the board in the same direction, within an imaginary rectangle the size of the original layout. You may slide the tiles up, down, left, or right, but you must slide them all in the same direction, and you must slide all the tiles. Be sure you've moved all the tiles on the board as far as they can go in the chosen direction. See Figure 2 for an example.

When you finish sliding the tiles in a particular direction, the tiles on that edge of the board should all be flush. For example, if you slide the tiles toward the right, all tiles on the right edge of the board should be flush with one another. The only time this rule does not apply is when the board breaks into two or more pieces. It is legal to choose a slide direction that does not allow any tiles to be moved.

As you remove families from the board, place the tiles into two stacks. You may choose which stack to place a family in, but at the end of the game, the two stacks must contain an equal number of tiles.

You must stack whole families; don't break them between the two stacks.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows. Your score for this room is the sum of the values of the tiles remaining on the board when you cannot remove any more tiles. (Nulls count as zero and aces count as 1.)

A perfect score for this room is zero.

Transition

If there are any tiles left on the board, pick them up in "reading order" (left to right, top to bottom) and stack them on top of the shorter of the two stacks. If one stack is taller than the other, remove the excess tiles from the taller stack and place them on the shorter stack. Each stack should now contain exactly 12 tiles.

Game Two: Magic Mirror

At the end of the slide, you and your fellow FunSeekers land in a room with one of those big, wavy mirrors. Across this Magic Mirror, tall-and-thin people become short-and-fat people, and short-and-fat people become tall-and-thin people. One of your compatriots moves forward to touch his image in the mirror. FunSeeker and image disappear in a matter/antimatter explosion. "It's a trap!" you scream, but the FunSeekers shuffle to the mirror one by one (well, two by two if you count their counterparts), until almost all of them are gone.

You wonder whether this place is shielded against gamma radiation. . .

Goal

Clear as many tiles as possible from the board.

Setup

You will build the Magic Mirror board from the two stacks of tiles left at the end of Slide Jam. Lay the tiles out in two grids that are four tiles wide by three tiles high. First empty one of the two stacks from top to bottom, laying the tiles out in reading order (left to right and top to bottom). Leave a small vertical gap to represent the mirror, and build a second 4x3 grid below the first one, using the second stack. The board should now look something like Figure 3.

Play

The gap between the two grids represents the mirror, so to remove tiles from the board, you must pick up pairs of tiles that total 5 points, one from each side of the gap. Null counts 0 and ace counts 1, so you may pick up pairs consisting of a null and a 5, an ace and a 4, or a 2 and a 3. Technically, you can match numbers of any suit, but you will score them differently (see below), so think carefully.

To be picked up, a tile must be in the row closest to the mirror. Tiles in matching pairs do not need to be directly opposite each other, as long as they are in their respective front rows.

If there are any tiles remaining in a column after you remove a tile, slide that column toward the mirror until the frontmost tile in the column is in the row before the mirror.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows:

Hint: If you sort the pairs as you remove them from the board into separate stacks of Twins, Cousins, and Distant Relatives, it will be easy to score at the end. Ignore the Twins stack, count each Cousin and divide by 2, and add the number of Distant Relatives. Finally, select one side of the mirror, and add three points for each tile on that side.

Perfect score in this game is zero.

Transition

Remove any Identical Strangers from the board in reading order and place them in their own stack. Leave the other stacks alone.

Game Three: Catwalk

The next room sports a bronze plaque in curious runes:

VETERAN TELEVISION ACTOR
MOREY AMSTERDAM
MEMORIAL CATWALK
(1908-1996)

Not many other FunSeekers are left after the Magic Mirror ordeal, and the remaining stragglers are afraid to cross the narrow, crooked catwalk over a pit that seems to have no bottom. One thing is for sure: you're not going first. What if the thing collapsed and you plunged into the abyss?

Better they than you. "Fly, you fools!" you cry, and boot them flying across the Bridge of Morey A. . .

Goal

To carefully flick coins along a track of tiles so that they don't fall off and score points.

Setup

Take each of the four stacks of tiles you formed at the end of Magic Mirror, one by one. You may select the stacks in any order, as long as you lay out all of one stack before beginning the next. Starting with the top tile of each stack, lay the tiles down one at a time, each with one edge connected to an edge of the previous tile. The position of each tile is determined by its suit. (See Figure 4.)

           S     
           |     
       M --+-- C 
           |     
           A     
 Figure 4: The Catwalk compass

Clockwise from north, the suits are red (Suns), green (Crowns), blue (Arms), and black (Moons). Thus, a Sun tile will be placed at the top edge (north) of the previous tile. If the next tile is a Crown tile, it will be laid to the right edge (east) of the Sun tile, and so on, creating a long winding line.

If a tile cannot be laid in the direction its suit specifies, continue laying tiles in the same direction that the catwalk has been going, until it is possible once again to lay the current tile in the direction it specifies. If you can't even add tiles to the catwalk by continuing in the same direction (for example, if the catwalk is about to run into a dead end), roll a die to pick a random direction from those available. In some cases, only one direction is possible.

If your catwalk doubles back on itself in a "switchback", separate the tracks by staggering the tiles to leave a small gap if necessary (see Figure 5).

Play

After you have laid all 24 tiles into a track, select one suit of coins (null, ace, 2, 3, 4, 5) to flick along this "catwalk". Set the rest of the coins aside in a "draw pool", face up. Pick one end of the catwalk as the start; it doesn't matter which end you pick, as long as you flick all of the coins in the same direction.

Select one of the coins and carefully begin to "flick" it toward the other end of the catwalk. (To flick a coin is to propel it by striking the edge of the coin with your fingernail.) If you can flick the coin along the entire length of the catwalk without letting it fall off to the table until the very end, that coin scores a perfect zero points. However, if a coin falls off the catwalk before the end, that coin adds to your score. The coin scores its value times the value of the tile from which it fell. For example, if a coin of value 5 falls off a tile of value 2, that coin adds 10 points (5x2) to your score for the room. Each coin and tile is worth its face value; nulls and aces are both worth 1. If you flick a coin off one tile so that it lands on another tile, score it as having fallen off the first tile.

When a coin falls off a tile, start the next coin on that tile. Thus, if the previous coin fell off the 23rd tile out of 24, start the current coin on the 23rd tile. However, each time you flick a coin off the very end of the catwalk, you must start your next coin (if you have any remaining) at the beginning of the catwalk. You must flick all coins along the catwalk, but you may flick them in any order.

If you flick a coin successfully off the end of the catwalk, set it aside in the "draw pool".

If a coin falls off the catwalk, place it in the scoreboard, as follows. The scoreboard is a (potentially) 4x3 grid made of coin pairs. The first coin of each pair is the coin that fell off the catwalk. The second coin is a coin from the draw pool with the value of the tile the coin fell from. See Figure 6: in this example, the player dropped a 5 coin off a null tile, then a 4 coin off a null tile, and finally a null coin off a 3 tile. Be sure to build the scoreboard and not just jot your score down on paper; it will be used to set up the next game. (See the Strategy section at the end of the rules.)

5 Null _ _
4 Null _ _
Null 3 _ _
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _
_ _ _ _

Figure 6: Example Catwalk scoreboard

In the unlikely case that you run out of coins of a particular value when constructing the scoreboard, do this:

Variant

If this level of bookkeeping makes you bleed from your ears, simply jot your scores on paper and discard all coins to the draw pool instead of the scoreboard when you finish flicking them.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows. Your score for this room is the sum of your scores for the individual coins you flicked along the catwalk, which you can calculate by multiplying each pair of coins in the scoreboard. If you let all of your fellow FunSeekers plummet into the darkness, add a 10 point penalty for being naughty.

As usual, a perfect score is zero.

Transition

Pick up the tiles in the catwalk and set them aside. No tiles are used in the rest of the game. Leave the coins in the scoreboard exactly where they are, and flip all the face-up coins in the draw pool face-down. Shuffle the coins.

Game Four: Roll Out the Barrels

And then there was one.

At the end of the Catwalk lies one of those rolling-barrel contraptions that funhouse designers love so much. No, wait, this isn't a typical rolling barrel -- it's a barrel maze! In order to cross this room, you'll need to roll into the barrel in the northwest corner, roll through the maze, and roll out the barrels into the southeast corner of the room.

You feel nauseated already. Too bad you left your bottle of Dramaquine back at the hotel. . .

Goal

"Tumble" the piecepack die, which represents you, from the starting barrel (coin) in the upper left to the exit barrel in the lower right corner, tipping the die one face at a time.

Setup

Take a die from your piecepack. Selecting a die in a color other than black will help you see your moves more easily.

The face-down coins left over from Catwalk are the "draw pool" from which you'll be constructing a grid of face-up coins that is four coins wide by six coins tall. If you created a score board in Catwalk, it will form the beginning of the barrel maze. Draw coins randomly from the draw pool and place them in reading order in the 4x6 grid, starting with the space after the last coin in the Catwalk scoreboard (if any).

Check through the maze in reading order to ensure that no orthogonally adjacent coins have the same value. If you find a coin that is illegally placed, pick it up and swap it with the next coin in the grid with which it can be swapped legally. (That is, ensure that the new positions of both coins are legal.) If there are no coins after a coin that can be swapped with it legally, scan backwards for the first legal swap.

Scan the board again to make sure all coins are legally placed. Swap any coins that are not. Repeat if necessary.

Play

Place the piecepack die on the start space (the coin in the upper left corner of the maze). You may start the die with any face up and facing any direction; however, depending on the coins surrounding the start space, as few as two faces of the die (or as many as all six) will actually be useful on top.

Once you start tumbling the die, you may not slide or turn it. You may only tip it on an edge so that it lands on an orthogonally adjacent coin. You may only tip the die onto a coin that shows the number that is currently on the top face of the die.

Consider Figure 7. In this case, the die can be tipped to the north or east, but not to the south or west. There are two exceptions to this movement rule: the null on the die is wild, and a null coin is wild. You may tip the die in any direction if the null face is on top, and you may tip any value onto a null coin.

Continue tipping the die through the grid until you reach the lower right corner, or are forced to stop. You have infinite retries on this game, and you may also backtrack.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows.

As usual, a perfect score for this game is zero.

Transition

Leave the "barrels" where they are. Practically the only thing you will need to do to set up the next game is flip them over. Keep the die you used in this game handy.

Game Five: Whack-a-Dummy

You're still wandering alone through the Funhouse. The sign at the entrance to this room reads,

WHACK-A-DUMMY
Haven't you always wanted
to whack a dummy?
(GRAB THIS MALLET)

The room is lit in ultraviolet and its floor is covered with round, manhole-sized doors. You walk toward the center of the room, armed with the mallet. Nothing happens. You walk one meter in a random direction, and a dummy erupts from under your feet with an ear-splitting buzz, sending you for a spill.

The dummies in this room are more pathetic than frightening (dressmakers' mannequins with colored wigs), but the loud buzzes emitted when they pop out of the floor make you leap several meters by reflex. It's time you start showing those dummies who's got the mallet. . .

Goal

Activate the mannequins in the four corners of the room, starting with the northwest corner and proceeding clockwise.

Setup

Flip all the coins face-down, leaving them in the same grid as before. Take the die from Roll Out the Barrels and place it on one of the four central coins of the board (your choice).

The die represents yourself, while each coin stands for a dummy. A face-down coin is a dummy hidden in its hole, while a face-up coin is an activated dummy (one that has popped out). The value of the coin signifies the volume of the noise the dummy makes, and how far in meters (that is, how many coins) you must jump by reflex. Flipping a coin face-up is called "activating" the dummy, while flipping it face-down is called "whacking" or "deactivating" the dummy.

Play

The basic move sequence in Whack-a-Dummy is as follows:

  1. "Walk" or "jump" to another coin, as determined by the coin you're on. 2. Flip the coin you land on. 3. Repeat.

Thus, at the start of the game, all the dummies are hidden under their doors. Walk one space orthogonally from the coin you are on. Don't flip it first. Flip the coin you land on. Jump the number of spaces specified by the coin. Continue.

When you land on a coin, flip it over. If it is now face-down, calmly "walk" one space in any orthogonal direction. If the coin is instead face-up, "jump" that number of spaces in any orthogonal direction. (Nulls and aces count as 1.) The board "wraps around", so if you jump two spaces off the east edge of the board, land on the second space in that row counting from the west edge, and so on.

If you ever activate or deactivate a corner dummy out of proper sequence, you score an automatic 10 point penalty and cannot continue activating the corner dummies until you set things right. Example: You activate the northwestern dummy, then accidentally activate the southwestern dummy (in the wrong order). You now score 10 points and must deactivate the southwestern dummy by whacking it back into its hole before you can continue your tour.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows. If you complete the game, your score is zero points plus whatever penalties you accrued. If you cannot complete the game, your score is 15 points plus whatever penalties you accrued.

As usual, a perfect score is zero points.

Transition

Jot down the sums of the face-up coins in each column of coins on the board, moving from left to right. These will be used to set up the next game. Nulls are worth 0 and aces are worth 1.

Game Null: Trampo-Land

Your last leap in the Whack-a-Dummy room takes you to a room with sunlight streaming from the ceiling, or where the ceiling would be. This must be the way out!

The room contains nothing but trampolines and several FunSeekers. They are from the group that was ahead of you. Unlike your group, they were smart enough to escape the earlier perils of the Funhouse (mostly), but they're not smart enough to bounce their way out of here.

Due to your extreme conscientiousness, as exhibited so many times already on your epic journey, you cannot allow yourself to leave until you have used the trampolines to bounce all of the other FunSeekers to safety, out of Trampo-Land, and out of this hellhole. . .

Goal

To "bounce" all the other pieces off the board, finishing by leaving yourself as the last piece in the Funhouse.

Setup

Use the die from the previous game to represent yourself again. Set aside one suit of coins and the other three null coins. Take the ace through 5 of the other three sets of coins and lay them out face-up (suits don't matter) in the following manner:

                @
              2   3
            4   5   @
          2   3   4   5
        @   2   3   4   5
  Figure 8: The empty Trampo-Land board

Each of these spaces represents a trampoline that you will use to bounce FunSeekers out of the Funhouse. Each trampoline will initially contain a FunSeeker (a kid, another adult, or yourself), with one empty trampoline to allow room to start bouncing around. The trampolines are numbered from 1 through 15 in reading order, as in Figure 8.

To determine which trampoline is initially empty, roll a die. On an ace or null, Trampoline 1 is empty; on a 2 or 3, Trampoline 2 is empty; and on 4 or 5, Trampoline 4 is empty. You may wish to place one of the dice not representing yourself on the empty trampoline temporarily, so you don't place another piece there by mistake. Be sure to remove the die from the empty trampoline after setup so a FunSeeker can bounce onto it.

Next, shake the six coins from the suit you set aside in your hands, and cast them onto the table. The values on the face-up coins will sum to a number from 0 to 15. If you cast 0, shake the coins and cast again. If you cast the number of the empty trampoline, add 1. Place the die representing yourself on the trampoline with the resulting number. Example: The only face-up coins you cast are a 6, a 3, and an ace. 6+3+1 = 10, so put the die representing yourself on Trampoline 10.

Now, take the four numbers you jotted down from the previous room. Place a pawn (representing an adult) on each trampoline represented by that number. If there is something on that trampoline already (yourself, another adult, the empty space), add one to that value and try to place the adult on the next trampoline. If the resulting number is greater than 15, subtract 15 from it and try to place the adult on that trampoline. Continue until all adults are placed.

Finally, use the kids to fill in all spaces that are not already occupied by yourself, other adults, or the empty trampoline. The kids are represented by all remaining coins, face-down, including the suit of coins you set aside and the three extra nulls (nine coins in all).

Play

To bounce a FunSeeker out of the Funhouse, you must jump another FunSeeker over him onto an empty trampoline. You may only jump over one piece at a time. The jumped piece is then removed to safety, off the board. This "jump" or "bounce" move over another piece into an empty space is similar to the basic move in Checkers, Draughts, or the classic "golf tee jumping puzzle" (sold at Stuckey's throughout our mighty land), with a few extra twists.

Kids (coins) can only bounce high enough to bounce out other kids. Adults (pawns, and your die) can bounce high enough to bounce out either kids or other adults. However, as you are the self-designated Funhouse Evacuation Procedures Director, no other piece may bounce you (the die) out, although you may bounce out any other piece. So, coins may only jump other coins, pawns may jump either pawns or coins but not the die, and the die may jump any other piece. The suits of the pieces don't matter, just the distinction between the three types of piece.

In addition, adults (including yourself) have one special power: they may "walk" to an adjacent empty space instead of bouncing out another FunSeeker. No adult may "walk" on two consecutive turns; you must at least move a different FunSeeker or make a bounce move with that adult in between two "walk" moves of a given adult.

Scoring

Score yourself as follows: 4 points for each kid left on the board and one point for each adult left on the board, except your die, which is worth zero. (See how selfless you are?)

Perfect score is zero, as usual.

Now you can score yourself for the entire Funhouse. Add your scores for the individual games together. This is your score for the whole game.

The Aftermath

After all kids and other adults have been bounced out of Epic Funhouse, you too may leave. It hasn't been all bad. One pleasure that Epic Funhouse has afforded you is seeing (heck, sending) your fellow man flying through the air as often as possible. However, like weary Ulysses, now you can finally go home. You sigh with the relief that unlike the aforesaid epic hero, you have a sharp lawyer who knows how to file a class action suit.

Strategy

Here are some strategy suggestions and "tricks" for the six games of Epic Funhouse. You may want to avoid reading this section until you have played the whole game through once.

Slide Jam

Breaking the board into more than one piece is legal, but it can make clearing the board harder, so it is not always a good idea.

Removing the tiles in families of null/ace/2 and 3/4/5, keeping only one kind of family in each stack, will probably give you the best setup for the next game, Magic Mirror. Of course, you'll need to balance that goal with the goal of making the best score in Slide Jam.

Magic Mirror

Remember that Identical Strangers (tiles left on the board) score highest, so don't get too focused on matching only Identical Twins.

If you can manage to pick up several Identical Twins of the same color in a row, you will end up with some long straight passages on the catwalk in the next game instead of having lots of switchbacks and hairpin turns. This is usually a good thing.

Catwalk

It's often best to flick the highest-valued coins the shortest distance you can manage. Since you may flick the coins in any order, your choice of which coin to select next may be strategically important, especially when considering the layout for the next game, which flows directly out of Catwalk.

The scoreboard for Catwalk is used as the top part of the board for the next game, Roll Out the Barrels. On the example scoreboard (Figure 6), the player has put himself in an excellent position to win the next game by positioning a null (wild) coin to the south and the east of the starting space in the northwest. This means that he can tip the die in either direction with any face on top, as much as tripling his chance to win. Unfortunately it cost him 12 points to do it (5x1 + 4x1 + 1x3). It would have been better to use coins and tiles with lower values.

It's best to avoid dropping the null coin off the catwalk first, or it will be your start space in the next game, which is wasteful. You might also want to try to distribute null coins not surrounding the start space evenly on the scoreboard.

Note that if you flick all six coins off the catwalk "prematurely", you will determine what the entire top half of the barrel maze contains in the next game.

Roll out the Barrels

Don't despair if you don't get a perfect score in this game. Just as with many playing card solitaires, not all tableaus will "come out", although most seem to. It is always possible to optimize your path toward the exit barrel so that you score a minimal number of penalty points.

You may find it helpful to use a second die from your piecepack to help you predict which faces on the die in the maze will come up. If you do this, ensure that the numbering on both dice is identical; some handmade piecepacks are erratic in this respect.

In preparation for the next game, Whack-a-Dummy, take a good look at the layout of the barrels. There is a memory element to Whack-a-Dummy, so the more you can remember about the layout of the coins, the better you will probably do.

Whack-a-Dummy

If you activate a corner dummy with a value of null or ace, use the wraparound of the board to activate the next corner dummy.

Advanced players may want to try optimizing the setup of the next game, Trampo-Land, by only turning up certain values in each column of the Whack-a-Dummy Board.

Trampo-Land

Seven words: Get the kids out of the corners!

Also, if you're stuck, don't forget about the special "walking" move the adults (including your die) can make.

Credits

Thanks to our playtesters: Meredith Hale (Guinea Pig Zero), Nat Dupree, Steve Dupree, Kisa Griffin, John Reiher, AlphaTim Schutz, JT Thomas, Chad Urso McDaniel, and Steve Vallee.

Extra thanks to AlphaTim Schutz for the graphics. Without Tim, all the illustrations would have been in ASCII. Tim, you should have been a professional graphic designer, or perhaps a professional friend. You do them both well.

Thanks also to the following game designers and scholars, who often provided us with an idea for a way out of a tight spot in the Funhouse:

Robert Abbott, inventor of rolling cube mazes as well as a lucid technical writer.

John D. Beasley, author of The Ins and Outs of Peg Solitaire (1985), and Martin Gardner for his book Mathematical Carnival (1975), both of which provided much food for thought and food for Trampo-Land.

Reiner Knizia, for his excellent dice game Decathlon, which gave us the idea of a series of games with a cumulative score. Perhaps our game is not better than Herr Doktor Knizia's, but we believe we have taken the concept to the next stage of development.
Decathlon: http://www.apba84.dsl.pipex.com/kgcoolstuff.htm

James Kyle, for his piecepack game Silver Isle, which pointed the way toward random terrain generation in Catwalk. Also, for inventing the piecepack! The designers of the computer game Oxyd and the developers of the free/libre/open-source version Enigma, which provided an example of a crucial mechanism (the oxyd) when it was most needed. You may recognize a bit of Oxyd in Whack-a-Dummy.
Enigma: http://www.nongnu.org/enigma/

David Parlett, author of Solitaire: Aces Up and 399 Other Card Games (1979), for his description of "Totals" games such as Pyramid, which provided some of the impetus for Magic Mirror.

Finally, thanks to Phillip "Benedict" Lerche for creating the Solitary Confinement contest and to Karol of Mesomorph Games for her hard work in administering the contests.

History

1.0.1, 2004-01-12: Essentially identical to contest version, but with slight formatting error fixed.
1.0, 2003-12-08: Solitary Confinement competition entry version. Playtest clarifications.
0.2.0, 2003-12-06: Graphics added. Significant rules changes and clarifications after playtests. Theme text.
0.1.3, 2003-11-30: First LATEX version.
0.1.2, 2003-11-29: Much additional material (ASCII illustrations, credits, etc.).
0.1.1, 2003-11-28: Marty's first developmental edit.
0.1.0, 2003-11-28: First complete written version. Brain-dump from Ron.

License

Copyright (c) 2003 by Ron and Marty Hale-Evans. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html