Giveaway of the Day - Surakarta

Introduction:

The first time this was given away back in July 2007 it received a positive 70% of 162 votes (over the vacation season) and was probably one of the last games given away before the golden age of the game giveaway project started to fade. (The project closed for several weeks following this giveaway, and then we started to see the first reruns appearing). You can read the previous comments by clicking HERE. The download size is 31.3Mb (smaller than the first time this was given away) and when installed is 34.4MB. The DX9.0 folder has been removed from the original games folder, which has reduced the size of the game significantly. As with all games distributed by Merscom, there’s no desktop shortcut installed. You’ll find a tutorial on how to create shortcuts to the desktop and start menu in the games discussion forums.

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The Game;

Surakarta is a traditional two player board game from Java Island; and is named after the old capital of the island. The board has six horizontal and six vertical lines. The joints of the four external bars are linked by circular lines Each of the players has 12 pieces which are placed on the intersections where the vertical and horizontal lines cross on both sides of the board. When you choose to play solo you can select which player starts first from the games set up window.

The pieces can be moved in any direction (vertically, horizontally or diagonally) between two adjacent joints; the destination joint must be empty. You can only move to intersections that are free. ‘Initially’ this means that you can only move marbles from the first row and then these can only be moved to three positions except for the two marbles that are adjacent to the blue semicircles. At the most a marble is able to move to eight different intersections which surround the marble provided the intersections are empty. Captures are made by moving a piece along one of the lines and landing on the joint occupied by the captured piece. However you can only do this so long as you go around at least one of the eight curves of the board and that the route is free from other marbles. You ‘can’ use more than one of the curves if necessary and you are not allowed to jump over any pieces on the board.

If you’ve never played the game before there’s a useful tutorial stage you can play which gives you instructions on what to do and also tells you how many marbles you are able to take as well as how many marbles your opponent is able to take. There’s an excellent help menu which links to the games manual that you can also find within the games installed folder. This manual is quite comprehensive and includes details of how to play the game as well as installation instructions and how to set up a multiplayer game. You can either play it online via the internet or via a local area connection. If you have a home network you can play between two of your computers.

I’ve taken quite a few screenshots of the tutorial phase and several in game moves as well as all the menus found in the game (see links below in the resources section).

The options menu enables you to adjust or turn off both sound effects and music as well as toggle on or off tool tips. There is only music during the menu phase of the game. Once in game there are only sound effects. The music (which reminds me of a Balinese Gamelan) cannot be changed as far as I can see, unless you are adept at editing script. You’ll probably find the music is in the ogg format, but I’ve not bothered to search through the games script to confirm this. There is a selection button for choosing different styles of pieces but the game only comes with the metal marble skins. At the bottom of the ‘in game’ screen you have four large buttons arrayed from left to right. These are for changing the camera viewpoint – there’s four different viewpoints and includes a 2D top down view, a 3D with silver to the left and copper to the right view, a 3D copper at the top and silver at the bottom view or a 3D copper to the left and silver to the right view. The second button gives you advice for your next move. This is shown as a green circle surrounding the marble to be moved and a filled in green circle where the target intersection is. The third button is used to cancel the last move. It can be used repeatedly to return to any point previously right back to the start of the game if you wish. The final button brings up the main menu minus a few of the buttons such as the help button and the network play. There’s also a chat button, but this is only visible when you are playing a multiplayer game. The Chat window allows you to chat with your opponent and to see the moves they have made. The triangle situated in the top right minimizes the window, which you can also move by clicking and dragging on the upper bar.

The main menu:

• Tutorial: start a solo game at easy level in which game advice will be given to you. Ideal to start off with and learn basic strategies! You are given warnings via the tutorial window as to how many of your opponents marbles you can take (if any) and how many your opponent can take when it is their turn (liable to change because you have a move to make)

• Solo game: opens the New game window which allows you to start a new game, against the computer or another human player, and to choose the level of difficulty for a game against the computer. There are three levels of difficulty, Easy (green), Medium (yellow) and hard (red)

• Network: opens the multiplayer game window which allows you to create or join a game on local area network (LAN), or to play on Exotik-games.com. However you’ll be hard pushed to find any games as it’s hardly likely that someone would wait around to play a game. The best way to lay online is to arrange a time and date with someone who is interested and one of you agree to set up the server. I’ve never seen the Exotik games server work ever since getting this game the first time last year.

• Load a game: allows you to continue a saved game.

• Scores: shows the table of high scores. These can be reset at any time.

• Options: opens the options panel.

• Help: This takes you to the games manual which contains full instructions on how to play the game as well as installation and starting the game, plus playing the solo game or multiplayer. (see above for details)

• Quit: closes the application and goes back to Windows.

Conclusion:

I’ve always been fascinated by games from around the world, so this was very welcome the first time it was given away. I still think it’s an excellent game and it can be quite challenging when played on hard. In my opinion its well worth 8 out of 10 and I’d recommend anyone who loves board games to download this one. Good news for those who like portable games. It’s free standing so you can play this from a memory stick, a CD or any other removable media, also you can transfer the game file from one computer to the next because there’s no registration details stored in the registry.

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Resources

Images – All on one page

Images – As a Slideshow

Other games:

Vampire Rat posted a link to a community of Surakarta players the last time this was given away. The game board isn’t as graphically pleasing, but it’s the same game. You can find the community via the following link:

Online Surakarta

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Known problems when trying to play online:

If, when you create or list a multiplayer game or when you connect to Exotik-Games.com, the game doesn’t seem to be responding, it’s probably due to a problem with your firewall.

1) If you use ZoneAlarm, you need to manually configure the game’s access to internet or Local Area Network, depending on your needs; to do this follow the bullet points below:

• Open ZoneAlarm (via the icon in the taskbar, or from the Start menu)

• Choose the tab Program control on the left

• Choose the tab Programs in the top right

• Choose the button Add in the bottom right

• In the selection window that opens, choose to start up Surakarta, for example C:\Program Files\Surakarta \Surakarta.exe and click on Open to validate. Surakarta.exe should now appear in the list of applications. Select it and confer upon it all the connection rights by clicking with the left button on each exclamation mark in the columns Secured Access/Internet and Secured Server/Internet to display the menu and choose Authorize.

If the problem persists in spite of these modifications, deactivate or uninstall ZoneAlarm when you want to play a multiplayer game.

2)

If you have another firewall, try hitting « alt tab » to configure your firewall or consult its information guide.

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This is pretty neat! Thanks, GGAOTD, and thanks Wrabbit for your review. Games from other cultures are always intriguing to me also. It’s hard to think at first in that loop-de-loop way, so the first level was trial and error for me (mostly error). But it’ll be fun to get the knack of this and start winning a few.