About Counterpoint

Othello, but the board makes music and the two colours are two orchestras. There’s no grid to read left-to-right. Instead a single cursor spirals out from the centre of the board to the corners and back in again, landing on one disc at a time and singing it as one note. Whoever owns that disc decides the voice, so the melody is woven between the two armies — EVIL is the Hollow Court (church organ, choir, cello, harpsichord — the cathedral), LIGHT is the Glass Meadow (strings, harp, flute, celesta — the heroic bright).

Because the line only ever plays one note at a time, it can never turn into a wall no matter how full the board gets. Owning more territory gives you a longer, more developing tune; getting crushed down to a couple of discs leaves you a short, repeating plink — the lament, with no code behind it, just the geometry. Placing a disc adds its pitch to the line and sounds instantly; capturing flips a run of the enemy’s notes into your own voice, which you hear the next time the spiral winds past. The board is born small and blooms outward — 4×4 to 6×6 to 8×8 — so the music expands as the war does. A reed-organ pad holds a chord underneath so nothing can sound wrong, and corners are the prizes: unflippable, each one taken rings out a little cadence.

Changelog

• Initial release