Bronze Fen Columns

GORILLAS

About this app

A quiet offline board game for one player against the computer, built on a single idea that almost no other game uses: you do not move a piece, you move a LINE.

Any straight unbroken run of your own adjacent pieces is a column. A column of four moves as one body, up to four squares along its own axis, and it keeps its shape when it lands. Two pieces standing together are already stronger than two pieces standing apart, and that is the whole strategy of the game.

TAKING

A column may only take an enemy column that is strictly SHORTER and lies directly ahead of it on the same line. Four beats three. Four does not beat four. Nothing takes sideways, nothing takes through a gap, and the whole enemy line comes off the board at once when it falls.

So every turn is the same quiet question: is my line long enough yet, and is theirs about to become longer.

WINNING

You win by having more pieces standing on your opponent's home rank than they have on yours at the start of your own turn. The delay matters. A lone piece that slips across can be answered before it counts, so the last rank is not a race to arrive but a position you have to hold for a full turn. You also win outright by taking everything.

WHAT IS INSIDE

- Three opponents. Calm moves soundly and rarely looks ahead. Keen weighs every reply one move deep. Sharp searches two moves ahead and understands that mass beats speed.
- Two boards. The full fourteen by twelve field for a long game, and a ten by eight field when you want a short one.
- Tap any piece and every column it belongs to lights up, one for each of the eight directions, with the reach drawn along each axis. Any enemy column you could take is outlined, with its length shown against yours, so the rule is visible instead of remembered.
- A home rank counter for both sides above and below the board.
- A full illustrated explanation of column movement and the strictly-shorter rule.
- Statistics kept on the device: wins by incursion and by capture, the longest column you have ever moved, and pieces lost per win.

HOW IT PLAYS

Openings are slow and look almost empty. Both sides shuffle single pieces, because a single piece is worth almost nothing and a line of five is worth a great deal. Then the board tightens, files fill, and suddenly one long column can sweep down and clear a whole defensive line in a single move. Good play is mostly about not letting that happen to you.

It rewards patience and punishes the habit of grabbing material. A greedy exchange that shortens your own line by two is usually worse than the piece you took.

OFFLINE AND QUIET

No internet, no accounts, no advertising, no in-app purchases, no analytics and no sound at all. Everything you do stays on the device. The game runs in portrait, fits in a few megabytes, and works exactly the same on a plane as at home.