Snake Duel

Snake Duel is a same-screen duel played on a green printed circuit board. Two riders are electrons: they never stop, they only turn ninety degrees, and every cell they cross is plated into a copper trace that stays there for the rest of the round. Run into copper, into one of the black logic chips, into a capacitor can or off the edge of the board and the current dies in a shower of sparks and a puff of smoke. The traces are alive while the round is on — a pulse of light runs back down the copper behind each rider, so you can see at a glance how much of the board is already spoken for.

The pressure comes from the clock. Riders speed up a little every second, so a stand-off in an open corner never lasts; sooner or later somebody has to commit. Components drop into empty pads to change the odds: a battery for three seconds flat out, a fuse that takes your next crash for you, a resistor that slows everybody else down, a capacitor that carries you over one trace, and an eraser chip that wipes the oldest third of your own copper and gives you room to work with again. They always land in mirrored pairs, so both ends of the board get the same chance at them.

There are seven hand-laid boards plus one the game routes on the spot — a bare board, a farm of chips, a maze of dead copper, two halves joined by a single bridge, a bus ring with a gate on each side, two rows of capacitors crossing corner to corner, and a cross of buses through the middle — and a rotation setting that moves you on after every round. Play two at one keyboard, add two computer riders for a party of four, or take on the computer at Easy, Normal or Sharp; Sharp counts the free space behind every turn with a flood fill and will happily wall you into a corner you cannot get out of. On a phone in portrait the board runs up the screen and the second player's turn buttons and scoreboard are upside down, so you can lay the handset flat on a table and sit at opposite ends of it. Pick your colour from six, set the match to three, five or ten rounds, and watch the deciding crash in slow motion.