Mordicus

Collect every coin, and walk out alive.

The goal

A board is cleared when every coin has been collected. Mordicus picks them up by walking over them. All that is left is not getting caught on the way.

Moving

The four arrows move Mordicus one square. He never moves diagonally, and that is what makes a square diagonal from a gorilla safe.

Stepping onto an occupied square pushes whatever is there, provided the square beyond is free. A whole chain of objects moves at once. A red block never moves.

The turn, and what follows

Every step happens in two beats. Yours first. Then the board reacts: gorillas advance, arrow blocks set off, and it all plays out until nothing moves any more.

That is why a step is worth thinking about: you are not the danger to yourself — what your step sets off is.

The gorillas

The red one is a permanent predator. It eats bananas, it eats Mordicus, and eating does not calm it down.

The blue one has two states. Hungry, it is as dangerous as the red one. But after eating a single banana it is full: it stops eating, stops moving, and becomes a plain obstacle.

Feeding a gorilla

You do not push the banana into the gorilla. You put it on a square next to it: it will go and get it by itself during the reaction that follows, and the banana will be gone.

This is the mechanic most boards are built on: a blue gorilla put to sleep at the right moment opens a path that did not exist.

Arrow blocks

An arrow block points in one direction. Pushed, it sets off that way and keeps going until it meets something. It crosses the board and changes everything on its path — including where you are not.

The bonus

Every board starts with a bonus of 1000. Every valid step costs 5. An impossible step costs nothing, and neither do the board's own reactions.

A cleared board is worth 1000 points plus whatever bonus is left. A board finished in twenty steps is therefore worth far more than the same board finished in a hundred.

Stepping back

The F1 key undoes your last step — and whatever the board did in reaction. A pushed block comes back, a launched arrow comes back. The round trip costs 5 bonus points.

Only one step is kept, and it never undoes a death: once Mordicus is caught, that life is gone.

Coming back later

There are more than two hundred boards. Every five boards, the clear screen shows a four-digit code. Write it down: it reopens the game at that mark on any device — phone, computer, or the television in the living room.

The device you play on remembers your highest mark by itself; the code is what carries it from one device to another. It is keyed in on the opening screen, under Enter a code.

The keys

▲ ▼ ◀ ▶	move, push
F1	undo the last step
✓	carry on, between boards
★	leave the game

On a keyboard, Esc and Backspace also act as the star, Enter and the spacebar as the check mark.