49. Games

amadeOS comes with fifteen games, all in the Games drawer of the Front Panel. They are written for amadeOS with its own game engine, have no advertising, no accounts and no purchases, and need no network.

What all games share

• Best scores and times, ten for each game (Game → High Scores… in Mines and Solitaire).
• Every game speaks the five languages of amadeOS.

The thirteen action and strategy games also share:

Key	What it does
Enter or Space	Starts from the title screen
P or Esc	Pause. Leaving the window pauses too.
F11	Full screen and back
F12	Shows how long each frame takes, for the curious

• Title screen. It names the keys, and in the arcade games the computer plays until you start, so you can watch how the game goes.
• Game → Graphics chooses how the picture reaches the screen: Direct, sharp at the full size of the screen, or Pixels, at 640 × 400 enlarged with square pixels, as on the home computers of the 1980s. If a game runs jerkily on an old computer, try Pixels.
• Game → Sound switches sound effects and music off.

Mines and Solitaire take the colours of your palette in Settings; F2 starts a new game in Mines.

Thinking and cards

Mines

Find all mines on the field without stepping on one. Left click opens a cell; a number says how many mines touch it. Right click sets a flag. Middle click on a number opens its neighbours once enough flags surround it. The first click is always safe. Three sizes in the Game menu, from Beginner (9 × 9, 10 mines) to Expert (30 × 16, 99 mines).

Solitaire

Klondike, the classic patience. Build the four piles at the top right from ace to king in one suit; in the seven columns cards go down in alternating colours. Click the stock to turn a card, or three with Game → Draw Three. Drag cards, double-click to send a card home. Undo with Ctrl+Z as far back as you like.

Arcade classics

	Game	What you do
	Paddle	The ball game for two paddles: against the computer with the arrow keys, or two players on one keyboard (W and S against the arrows). The first to 11 wins.
	Bricks	Break the wall with ball and paddle, by mouse or keys. Silver bricks take two hits, gold ones never break. Five levels.
	Snake	Steer the snake to the apples with the arrow keys; it grows longer and faster. Never bite the wall or yourself.
	Rocks	Turn, thrust and shoot through waves of rocks that break into smaller ones. Down jumps into hyperspace.
	Swarm	Insects fly in, take their places and dive at your fighter. Every third stage is a challenge with a bonus.
	Maze	Eat every dot while four ghosts hunt you, each in its own way. After an energizer, you hunt them.
	Blast	Up to four players lay bombs among crates, on the keyboard and on gamepads; the computer fills the empty seats. The last one standing wins.
	Jump	Run and jump through a meadow, caves and the clouds, take the coins, land on beetles and birds, reach the red flag. Gamepads work too.
	Hover Cab	Fly a cab on jets between rooftops: Up lifts, the side arrows steer, Space moves the gear. Land gently on the passenger's pad, fly them where they ask, and earn the fare and a tip. The passengers call out loud. Twelve shifts, from the city to an orbit station and a storm at sea.

Strategy and building

	Game	What you do
	Towers	Orcs, wolves and trolls march on your castle. Build archers, cannons and frost towers beside the road, or on open ground, where your towers make the maze.
	Sands	Real-time strategy on a desert planet: harvest crystals, build a base, wind turbines and factories, and drive out the enemy with trikes, tanks and rocket launchers. Three missions.
	Colony	Lay out houses and roads in a green valley; carriers bring the goods from flag to flag. Woodcutters, a sawmill, farms, a windmill and a bakery, sheep and a weaver make the settlement grow.
	Town	A city in isometric view: roads, zones for homes, shops and industry, power and water. The town grows by itself where people want to live and work.

In the strategy games, F5 saves and F9 loads, and a mission opens when the one before it is won.

Your own keys

Most action games let you change their keys in a small settings file, such as ~/.config/amadeos/snake/snake.properties. The Game Developer's Handbook in the Help drawer has the details.

The games are in the spirit of the classics of the 1980s and 1990s, drawn anew, and built so that each one can be read and learned from: the Game Developer's Handbook in the Help drawer explains them chapter by chapter.

Under the hood

Every game is a package of its own, such as amade-mines-game or amade-hover-cab-game, and all are installed by default. They are built on amade-game-engine, a 2D game engine in Java. The best scores are in ~/.local/share/amadeos/games/<game>/, the settings in ~/.config/amadeos/<game>/.