(MSDOS) Demonic Foundations

This is an MSDOS game. I recommend the DOSBOX emulator if you want to play on a modern machine.

Take turns to move one of your demons and build a tile on an adjacent space. The first to stand their demon on a stack 3 tiles tall wins the game! Play mortal vs mortal, or switch to the 'machine' opponent for single player.

😈 Demons can move to an adjacent empty space that is lower, the same level, or one step higher than their current position

😈 After moving, you must pick an adjacent tile stack to build up one level. Levels are colour coded dark grey, light grey, orange, red, purple to help identify their height

😈 Building on a stack that already has three tiles will permanently block it off with a monstrosity

😈 Move your demon to stand atop a stack three tiles tall to immediately win

😈 You can also win by blocking your opponent from having any valid moves, diabolical !

Notes:

'Machine' opponent is a bit buggy. It will usually make reasonably good moves but there's a bug I haven't yet tracked down where it will rarely try to make an illegal move. In this circumstance, control will revert to the user for that turn only.

Performance for real MSDOS machines:

The game isn't optimised and uses a fair bit of RAM, holding all graphics and audio in memory all the time. If you're running on a 486 or earlier and run into any problems, leave a comment and maybe we can motivate me to take some time to make things a little more efficient.

This game is inspired by Santorini, a game I've never played, so apologies if I've missed some nuance of gameplay in my interpretation.

'DEUS.WAV' sampled from an old choir cassette tape, singers unknown.