Flipside is a two-player game where both players play at the same keyboard (hotseat multiplayer). You have a single board, where you play on both sides of it simultaneously. Basically, one side tries to kill the other side. Players take turns moving units and attacking each other. (Description continues below.)

This game is made for Windows XP or newer and is based on Sean Howard’s Game Mechanic #41: Flipside.

Download Flipside

Description (continued): But if they are on two different sides of a plane, how do they fight each other? You’ll notice that each side has two different looking units in the corners. They are special units. They cannot be killed, but they also cannot attack either. If they are targeted and hit, they will be pushed back a square in the opposite direction of the attack.

But if they aren’t combat units, what do they do? They can flip specific squares from one side to the other. The unit with a + on his helmet flips all the squares in the same row and column (orthogonally), while the unit with an X on his helmet flips all the tiles going out diagonally from his position. The special units do not change sides at all, ever, but any other unit on a flipped square is moved to the other side regardless of which side he started on, unless of course one of the special units is occupying a tile that a regular unit would flip to.

Here’s an instructional/introductory video made by mouser on DonationCoder.com. He pronounces my name wrong but otherwise does a pretty good job explaining and showing off the game.

Flipside was originally created for DonationCoder’s NANY 2012, an annual programming challenge (which stands for New Apps for the New Year). You can see Flipside’s original NANY page on DonationCoder here.

Instructions:

Left click to select a piece to move, then click within the green squares shown to move it to that position, or left click the unit again to unselect it. You cannot unselect a unit if it has already moved or performed an action.

Right click to perform an action. Normal units can attack adjacent enemy units (not diagonally).

Right click with a special unit selected to see which tiles will be flipped by that unit. If you want to flip those tiles, double-right-click. Remember, special units cannot attack. They can only flip tiles and units located on the flipped tiles.

Due to the fact that you may be able to move or perform an action when you don’t want to, you will sometimes need to press T to end your turn. Note that you always have to manually end your turn with T after moving a special unit if you don’t also want to flip any tiles on that turn. Also note that you can’t skip your own turn without doing anything. You must move or perform an action before ending your turn.

It should also be noted that units benefit from being on the same colored squares and are weakened when standing on opposite colored squares. So a light knight standing on a light square will do more damage and take less damage than a light knight standing on a dark square.

Credits: