What is KAtoms?

KAtoms is a clone of an old Amiga turn-based multiplayer strategy game for the KDE desktop, with improvements such as irregular board shapes, AI players, and a scaleable user interface. Players take turns to place their atoms on the board, causing explosions and chain reactions which convert enemy atoms to their own colour. The object of the game is to overwhelm the board. The simple rules of the game give rise to complex and unpredictable reactions which provide interesting gameplay.

How do you play?

Players take turns to place atoms on the grid. The atoms are placed by clicking on the grid. Different boxes on the grid can hold different amounts of atoms, depending on how many neighbours it has. When boxes have too many atoms placed in them they will explode. Players can only place atoms on empty boxes or boxes containing atoms of their own colour.
  • Corner boxes can hold only one atom before exploding.
  • Side boxes can hold only two atoms before exploding.
  • Middle boxes can hold three atoms before exploding.
  • When a box of atoms explodes it adds an atom to each adjacent box, if the boxes that are filled now exceed the stable limit they will also explode. This leads to chain reactions, the mastery of these reactions are the key to the game.

    The way to win the game is to be the only player left with atoms on the grid. When a box of atoms explodes, the atoms in the adjacent boxes are changed to the current players colour. A win is acheived by eliminating all enemy atoms in this manner. Once a player has no atoms left the can make no further moves.

    It is important to note that reactions happen in parallel, making it difficul to predict the result of a large reaction.

    Currently there are two styles of play, a normal mode where each player takes turns until only one player is left, and a tournament mode where the grid is reset to start a new round when a player is knoced out.

    Downloads

    KAtoms 0.4 (2008-01-07)
    katoms_0.4-1_i386.deb Kubuntu 7.04 x86 debian package.
    katoms_0.4-1_amd64.deb Kubuntu 7.04 amd64 debian package.
    katoms-0.4.tar.gz Source package.

    KAtoms 0.3 (2008-01-02)
    katoms_0.3-1_i386.deb Kubuntu 7.04 x86 debian package.
    katoms_0.3-1_amd64.deb Kubuntu 7.04 amd64 debian package.
    katoms-0.3.tar.gz Source package.

    Screenshots

    KAtoms 0.4, Monday 7th January 2008
    KAtoms 0.3, Wednesday 2nd January 2008

    KAtoms for Palm OS

    In 2005 a version of KAtoms was written for Palm OS using OnBoard C on a Sony Clie TJ35. Unfortunatly that Clie no longer works, so development on the PDA version has ceased. The latest version can be found here.

    Links

    http://aminet.net/package/game/2play/atoms Aminet page for original Atoms game on Amiga.
    http://freshmeat.net/projects/katoms/ Freshmeat project page.
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/katoms Sourceforge project page.

    Last updated : 2008-01-16

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    html and images - Gordon D McKillop