Poplars is a turn-based strategy game that is traditionally played on a 6×5 board with two opponents. (You can, however, play on any sized board with up to four players optionally) It is a game for all ages that requires recursive thinking and good foresight. Poplars is a game of position and territory that requires pure skill (as are other games such as go, chess, and tic-tac-toe). The object of the game is to completely own every square that contains a Poplar without letting the opponent do the same.
Poplars was completely developed by myself (Gary Court) in my second year of university (March, 2002) for a class project. It is written in C++ & MFC, and should work on virtually any version of Windows (since ‘98). It is based on the game Critical Mass, which happens to have been developed by one of my professors.
The game is played by placing Poplars on the board one at a time. Each spot on the board can only hold a limited number of Poplars (determined by the number of adjacent spaces), and when that spot is filled, it will “pop” and spread the Poplars to the adjacent spaces. However, the consequence of “popping” a space is that it may cause a subsequent space to be full creating a chain reaction of multiple spaces “popping”.
The game can be played with two to four players, human or computer, on any sized board. There are 5 skills levels (including a training level), undo move feature, and quick tip (for those who are stuck).
This was one of my most interesting projects in university at the time as it exposed me to such new concepts as game development, C++, MFC, Windows development, GUI development, artificial intelligence design, and usability design. I received an A+ for the project and the course, and won the unofficial award of Best Game of the Class.
For more information on Poplars and how to play it, please see the included help file.
