Mysterious Palantir 1.0 review

This game combines arcade elements with a bit of strategy

License: Shareware File size: 0K Developer: Absolutist

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This game combines arcade elements with a bit of strategy.
There are nine rather different games packed into it, and three skill levels for each one.

A fancy playing field shape gives you a great chance to excersize your pool skills. One more nice thing - the two-player modes were added - no more arguing with your relatives over whose turn is to play now.

Installation

Mysterious Palantir runs on all major Linux flavors (RedHat, Debian, Mandrake,
SuSE, Slackware and others). It is distributed as a gzipped tar archive
bshooter.tgz To install and run this game on your Linux system, please do
the following:

1) copy the file to a directory of your choice

2) unpack the archive:

tar xzvf palantir.tgz

3) go into Palantir directory and run the game:

cd Palantir;

palantir

The trial copy of the program will expire in 14 days. You can obtain a
registration key any time during or after the trial period.

Game Rules

Look at the board - there are some spheres in the middle of its sides. Just click on one of them and it becomes active. The sphere will fly in the direction you point. Inside a small hexagon in the middle of the board you can see some other spheres - they show the color of the next ones, so you may develop your own game strategy. The numbers in a light

blue hexagon at the right of the board indicate the number of unsuccessful attempts left till the end of the game round.

You will get some points if the sphere you have shot joins a group of spheres of the same color and they disappear. You will get ten times more points for every sphere that fell apart if they weren't connected to the center of the board. If you haven't removed any sphere by your shot - the number of attempts decreases and when it equals to zero new lines will appear from the center of the board and a new game round will begin. New lines will appear if the sphere you have shot hits the sides of the board it has come from and disappears. But in this case you won't lose your attempts.

You may choose between nine different games available (click on the `Pick game' button). First six games are single player games and the last three are multiplayer ones.

In the single player game your goal is to remove all the spheres off the board. You will have twice more points if you manage to kick off all the spheres of the same color. On the other hand the number of lines that appear at the end of every game round increases too.

In multiplayer games you should achieve different goals. The board is divided into two parts here. One half of which belongs to you and another - to your opponent. Your goal is to remove all the spheres from your half of the board and those common for both players lying on the line dividing the board. You should also fill the opponent's half and make the spheres overflow its borders. Keep in mind that the player on whose part of the board the spheres have been removed will get points.

Try to clear your half of the board and your score will be doubled and the game will be over. In case the spheres overflow the board the game is over too. You will lose all your points and lose the game if spheres overflow the board on your half. Another player must follow the same rules. At the beginning of every game you can choose players - either

human or computer ones. You will watch the game in Demo Mode if you choose both players as computer players.

Watching the Demo will help you to understand the rules of the game.