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  ×   AMBUSH!
v. • Sep 2018

This is a turn-based maze crawler. It requires strategic thinking and patience. Enjoy.

TL;DR: Wait for the enemy to land on a field you observe.

Controls
Menu
KEYBOARD
Esc
MOUSE
Click level number

Move
KEYBOARD
Cursor keys
Up Left Down Right
MOUSE
Click anywhere in the
desired direction

Your character will walk in the given direction as far as possible.

As a knight (jumps like a chess knight), you first choose the long direction, then the short.

Skip
Trying to reach an illegal field (e.g. wall or outside) is considered skipping the turn.
Alternatively you can click on your character to skip a single turn.

Fire
Your gun fires automatically whenever
you've ambushed someone.

Rotator
KEYBOARD
Activate: Enter
Rotate: Move character
Confirm: Enter
Cancel: Esc
MOUSE
Activate: Click symbol
Rotate: Click on maze
Confirm: Click in blue circle
Cancel: Click outside maze

Stand-by
KEYBOARD
Shift
MOUSE
Button 'AUTO SKIP'

In this mode your character will auto-skip turns until...
... any key is pressed / the maze is clicked.
... he's attacking an opponent.
... a Spider is about to notice him.
... the / Knight is threatening him.

This is useful if you have to sit still, waiting for a lot of enemy turns, and don't want to skip manually all the time.

Rules
A character is getting ambushed (shot at) in the moment he enters the opponent's line of sight, and stops there.

You earn points when your gun fires. The longer the shot distance, the higher your reward.

Each 100 points get you an Extra life (up to 8).

Each 3rd kill gets you another Rotator (up to 8), which lets you locally manipulate the maze (shift one Wall tile).

When the last Red falls, a level is solved.

As soon as Level 21 is beaten, the game is finally won.

Characters
Turn order:
// Player
/ Spiders (introduced in level 3)
/ Knight (introduced in level 4)
Violets (introduced somewhere in level 5 to 13)
Flowergirl (introduced in level 2)
one of the Reds

To shoot a Red, you need at least one bullet in your magazine. Otherwise, ambushing him won't work; he'll shoot you instead.

The harmless Flowergirl slowly tries to shy away from you diagonally. Whenever someone (even herself) gets shot at, she drops flowers you may collect to enhance the score.
She moves every 2nd turn, and no bullets are needed for ambushing her. Also, she's robust enough to survive a handful attacks.

If a Spider runs into you, its bite will make you also a spider. Then you have to bite (walk into) enemies to kill them, since you can't shoot anymore. In this state, getting bitten the next time will end your life.
Thus, when a Spider is about to move, and it sees you, it'll be heading in your direction.
A more aggressive type, introduced in level 18, always tries crawling towards the player - without having to directly see him.
Their movement is limited: up to 2 steps straight ahead.
To shoot them, you need at least one bullet in your magazine.

If the / Knight jumps on your character, you'll be smashed. He moves every 3rd turn, and no bullets are needed for ambushing him.
Shooting at the dark Knight doesn't kill him. Instead, he becomes the blue Knight.
Running into the blue Knight makes you become a knight yourself. Then you have to jump on enemies to kill them, since you can't shoot anymore.

The Violets behave pretty much like the Reds, except, they always seem undecided which direction to go.
To shoot them, you need at least one bullet in your magazine. Otherwise, ambushing them won't work; they'll shoot you instead.

Tips&Trix
When you're the Hunter:

At level start, collect as many bullets as you can; just to be armed/prepared for early and unexpected encounters.

Take your time to visually explore the maze before you even start moving; especially in the first levels, when only a few Rotators are available. Don't carelessly consume them, even if it means that you have to make lengthy or complicated detours.

Avoid running blindly into areas you haven't analysed yet. There might be closed paths (double dead ends or loops) which are easily entered but will trap you inside.

When a Red is trapped in a winded area, you need to find a different way in, so you can rest on his route, wait and ambush him, and then carefully exit on the same way you came in. Just don't leave the safe path; else you'd also be trapped.

Often, you can exploit the Flowergirl's predictable behaviour by steering her to appropriate positions and misuse her as (moveable) wall tile to either gain access to unreachable areas, or to remotely free a trapped Red.

Likewise, the Knight acts as moveable wall, and can be used to stop at.

There's only as many bullets available as there are Spiders.
In later levels, when Violets appear, you'd better spare the life of some Spiders, and use these precious bullets to decimate the Violets, because their ranged attack is usually a bit more dangerous.

In general:

The Reds never turn back to where they just came from (unless they have to, e.g. in a dead end). In this regard, their future path is rather predictable; especially when there's only simple bends/corners on their way. (The white dot indicates which direction they headed before, so it's clear where they go next if they're in a corner.)
If in doubt, simply follow them. Sooner or later you should get a chance to lay an ambush.

The Kill counter indirectly tells you how many Reds to shoot until a new Rotator appears: distance to the next number divisible by 3.

Avoid ambushing the / Knight (which mostly happens unintentionally). Sometimes, in an otherwise unsolvable level, you might still need him as a helper or to transform into a knight; not only to be able to jump over walls and to reach any maze field effortlessly, but also to kill Reds and other foes without needing bullets.

After a Spider's attack has made you a spider, you can bite back immediately to kill it. Otherwise you should step aside, or it'll bite again, which would be lethal.

A small Hunter symbol will appear in the maze when you become a spider/ knight. Touching it transforms you back into a Hunter.

Although your spider can't shoot, it's still able to lay an ambush (by always observing adjacent fields, and instantly biting if an enemy lands there).

In case a goal (e.g. reaching a bullet, or escaping a trap) can't be accomplished as the Hunter, you might let bite you, do the job in spider form, and later transform back by touching the Hunter symbol.

When you're in Stand-by mode as a spider/ knight, and an enemy you want to bite/smash comes into reach, you have to switch off auto-skip manually (by pressing any key, or clicking the maze) to gain back control for walking/jumping.

You can repeatedly ambush the Flowergirl by making her slip in and out a niche (tiny dead end), and harvest all her flowers until she's exhausted.

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