Spot Download (1990 Strategy Game)

A puzzle game loosely featuring licensing from the 7Up soft drink. The gameplay involves up to 4 players, which can be either human or computer, each taking on spots of a particular colour. Starting from opposite corners, they take it in turns to move, either by 'reproducing' one of their spots to form another one in an adjacent square, or by making a jump, losing the square you did have but taking one two spaces away.

When a piece lands next to one of another colour, that piece changes colour into that of their opponent. The winner of each round is either the last player with any pieces left, or the player who has the most pieces left when the level is full.

Not to be confused with Cool Spot, which is another computer game that features the past icon for the Seven Up soft drink, Spot is a simple board game that is perfect for those times when you have a few minutes to kill and don't want to get into anything to heavy. That is not to say that this game won't keep your interest for much longer if you really want to master it. On the surface Spot looks to play similar to the board game Othello. While the main objective is the same (finishing with more squares occupied by your color than that of the opponent) the rules of the game are different.

To play spot you are allowed to move one of your color pieces either one or two squares in any direction (or combination of directions) to an unoccupied square. Any occupied squares touching the newly occupied square are transformed into the color of the piece that was just moved there. If a player chooses to move his piece only one square, instead of two, his piece divides and occupies both the originating and destination square after the move. However, if the player moves his piece two squares then the square where he moved from is left vacant. A vacancy like that invites the opponent to move a piece there (if he has an eligible piece) and "capture" all the surrounding squares.

That probably sounds simple enough, right? Not so fast. Another bit of needed strategy can be introduced into the game by letting the game program redefine the board layout so that it is not the perfect square that you are used to. Having to defend and attack an irregular (but symmetrically) shaped board can call for an entirely new strategy each game. That is what keeps this game interesting.

Spot can be played against the computer or another opponent with up to four players per game. Each player will begin with one piece occupying a corner of the board. If you choose to play the computer there are 5 difficulty settings that can be used as you learn to master the game. If you play another live opponent you can use the options screen to set a timer on each move or for the game as a whole.

The instructional manual explains the rules and how to use the options screen to set up another player. It also describes how to reconfigure the game board.

Spot is a fun Othello-style game starring 7Up's Spot character. In this board game for one or two players, your objective is to occupy as many tiles as possible by placing your pieces on the board. You can either move one or two spaces at a time. When you move one space, your piece will multiply itself into the new tile; jumping two spaces means simply moving your piece. Whenever you land on a tile next to your opponent, all his/her adjacent pieces become yours, changing to your color. The pieces morph into 7Up mascot when you move them, but that's about the extent of using this licensed. The computer AI is decent, and offers a good challenge. Overall, a nice board game that could have used the Spots more extensively than several cute animations. Othello experts and fans of this type of game should take a look.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

People who downloaded Spot have also downloaded:
Settlers of Catan, Rommel: Battle for North Africa, Russian Front II: The Kursk Campaign, Scorched Earth, Spaceward Ho!, Shattered Union, Robert E. Lee: Civil War General, Settlers of Catan [2002]