Scrungeon

A solo word game using Scrabble bits.

Version 1.1!

Congratulations! You have defeated Jziqx the evil wizard. Now you must escape his dungeon with only your bag of magical tiles...

Play on a BBC Micro or Acorn Electron

Play on the Web via jsbeeb emulator

Setup

You will need

• a set of Scrabble tiles in a bag
• a 15x15 square board (as standard Scrabble)
• two (or four) 6-sided dice, and
• a supply of tokens small enough to fit on the tiles.

You should be able to use tiles in any language, but you may need to tweak the number of obstacles.

Add objects to the board according to how difficult you want your game to be: I suggest 18. For each object, determine its position by rolling two pairs of dice. Add up one pair for a column number from 2 to 12 and the other pair for a row number. Count rows and columns from the top or left edge, beginning at zero. Next roll a die for the obstacle type.

• 6 - Wall. Counts as 3 objects. Draw 3 tiles and place them upside down in a vertical line centred on the position you rolled. If a square is already occupied, place a fixed letter instead of the wall.
• 5 - Wall. Counts as 3 objects. Draw 3 tiles and place them upside down in a horizontal line in the same way.
• 4 - Treasure. Draw 1 tile and place it right way up on the square, with a token on it.
• 3 or 2 - Monster. Draw 1 tile and place it upside down on the square, with a token on it.
• 1 - Fixed letter. Draw 1 tile and place it right way up on the square.

You could try dropping tiles from above and then aligning them with the board. I haven't tried this.

Finally, add walls stretching 3 tiles into the board from the centre points of each edge, that is, the triple word score spaces not in corners.

Play!

Draw 7 tiles and begin placing words.

Your first word must begin at the top left corner.

For placing words, Scrabble rules apply, that is

• A move creates or extends a single word to form a new valid word.
• Words may read left-to-right or top-to-bottom, not backwards.
• You may not place a tile on a wall or another tile.
• After the first word, all words must use or adjoin letters from words already placed, to form a network.
• At the end of your move, all groups of 2 or more neighbouring letters in your network must always form valid words. Obstacles you have not yet reached do not need to form words.
• If your move places a tile next to a group of obstacle tiles, you incorporate the whole group into your network and the validity rule applies to it. If this can't be done, steer clear of the group!

Scoring is slightly different from Scrabble: you score the point value of each tile placed. Reusing a tile that's already on the board scores no points.

You may refill your rack to 7 tiles at any time. If you do, forfeit 1 point for each tile that was on your rack before refilling.

You may burn your rack, replacing all tiles with 7 new tiles. If you do, forfeit twice the point value of the tiles that you burned.

You may incorporate a treasure tile into a word you are forming by replacing it with a tile from your rack. If you do:

• Score 10 points.
• Discard the token and place the treasure tile on your rack.
• You may turn over the tiles of one 3-tile wall, or one monster (removing its token), converting this obstacle into fixed letters.

If when forming a word you pass next to a treasure tile, but do not incorporate it into your word, you may leave it alone, but group rules still apply: the incidental word(s) you have formed must be valid.

You may incorporate a monster tile into a word you are forming by replacing it with a tile from your rack, but only if you defeat or tame the monster. To do this, turn over the monster's tile to reveal the letter.

• If your letter is worth more than the monster's letter, you defeated the monster.
• If your letter is exactly the same as the monster's letter, you tamed the monster.
• If you didn't defeat or tame the monster, you are dead, and the game is over.

If when forming a word you pass next to a monster tile, but do not incorporate it into your word, you may leave it alone so long as it's face down. However when you defeat the monster and replace its tile, if you incidentally form another word that is not valid, the monster dealt you a fatal blow before expiring, and you are extra dead.

If you defeat or tame the monster:

• Score 10 times the monster tile's value (so if the monster was a Y, score 40 points).
• Discard the token and place the monster tile on your rack.
• You may turn over the tiles of one 3-tile wall, or one monster (removing its token), converting this obstacle into fixed letters.

If you don't have enough tiles left in the bag to refill your rack, and you can't place another tile, you are trapped in Jziqx's dungeon until next time you play. While trapped, every sentence you speak must contain a J, Z, Q or X.

If you place a tile on the bottom right corner space, you have escaped the dungeon and won the game!

Limitations of the BBC micro version

• You don't get the tile reveal bonus.
• There's no word dictionary so you can cheat.

See also

Another solo word game that doesn't need a board:

Scatter