OpenKropki

OpenKropki is an open-source and multiplatform implementation of the 'kropki' game. It runs on most POSIX systems (Linux, BSD...) and on Windows. MIT license.

'Kropki' is a pen & paper game that was quite popular in Poland (kropki), Russia (точки), Czechoslovakia (židi), Ukraine (крапки) and a few other eastern European countries. The game's name translates simply as 'dots'.

The concept is similar to Go, although it had to be adapted for on-paper gameplay:

each player takes turns into putting a new dot on the field.
when a player manages to put his dots all around a group of enemy dots, he creates a 'base', capturing the enemy's dots that lie inside.
a base cannot be trespassed by the enemy, but it can be captured.
the game ends when there is no place left on the field: the player that captured the highest number of enemy dots wins.

Download

Source code and archival versions

The source code of OpenKropki is maintained and versioned on the project's SVN repository. You may also download archival versions of past releases (incl. source code) in the archive.

Contact

Wanna get in touch? You'll find pointers how to do so on my personal homepage.

History

The game was presumably born because of the widespread popularity of Go in the Soviet Union during the '70. Difficulties associated with the lack of specific equipment, as well as the complexity and ambiguity of some rules of Go, led to an adaptation of Go to be played on paper. Given the abundance of variations of the new game and its almost simultaneous wide distribution across the USSR, this process most probably took place spontaneously and did not have a single center.