Tic Tac Threes

It’s like tic-tac-toe, but with limited pieces!

Centuries ago, a simple board game used to be popular all across the Old World. Bored guards, monks and students would carve nine marks on any pliable surface at hand and take turns trying to place three small objects in a straight line – usually coins, pebbles or beads. This game, believed to have originated in Ancient Egypt, was naturally called by many different names depending on where and when it was played, from nine holes by the English to 「チッキリ」 by the Ainu. Eventually, the dissemination of paper gave rise to its cousin tic-tac-toe, which by the turn of the 20^th Century had managed to largely displace nine holes.

Much later, in 2012, an unknown company somewhere in China released the first of a series of handheld game consoles known as the 1.8s after their colourful 1.8″ screens. Devised as a successor to those based on Timetop’s GameKing architecture, these consoles – speculated to have been made by Wellminds, Yuan Da or perhaps Timetop themselves – contained dozens of built-in games, mostly unlicensed ports of popular titles and remakes of GameKing games. One of them, however, seems to be original: misleadingly titled Tic Tac Toe or Gobang depending on the unit, it was actually a variation on nine holes in which, instead of being free to move any piece, players could only move the oldest placed stone at every turn, adding much more strategy to the game. Set to stolen music from Bubble Bobble and Contra, this game would be confined to the remarkably obscure 1.8s until now, when a random dork decided to recreate it on Windows sans stolen music after watching an Ashens video.

Features

• A game like tic-tac-toe, but with actual strategy
• Local two-player mode
• Highly adjustable difficulty
• Toggleable assist mode to help you keep track of the stones
• Ridiculous win fanfares
• A mute button (important)
• Records and high scores

Batteries not included.

FAQ

• The records screen displays an error!
  You’re playing the game in a folder you don’t have write permissions to. This can happen if you try to play the game without unzipping it. Extract the game to a folder outside Program Files, like C:\Games\tt3s.
• The hardest difficulty is too easy!
  I’m rubbish at this game, so I would love to hear your feedback on how I could make it harder!
• The easiest difficulty is too hard!
  I, too, am rubbish at this game, but that was the easiest I could code it short of making it place stones randomly – if you have any ideas of how to make it easier, do pour your heart out in the comments