Safe Zone
board game for Commodore 64, 2025
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Safe Zone is an Arabic-style board game that is somewhere between Halma and a
sliding puzzle.
The playing field is an 8x8 square board with a 4x4 square area in the middle
(the Safe Zone). Then there are 8 boxes with arrows, two for each direction.
Both players (human and computer) each move 8 pieces. The computer always uses
the red pieces (top), the human player moves with the blue pieces.
The aim of the game is to move all 8 of your pieces within the 4x4 spaces of
the safe zone. Whoever manages to do this wins.
No piece can be jumped over or captured during the game, so all 16 pieces
always remain in play.
Once you have entered the safe zone, you can no longer leave it. However, if a
piece moves onto an arrow square, all pieces within the zone move one square
in the direction of the arrow. This means that pieces are sometimes pushed
out of the zone at the edge. If another piece outside the safe zone blocks
the path of the moving piece, this piece is not moved. If a piece lands on an
arrow space while being moved, this is not triggered. Otherwise, an arrow
space becomes inactive after activation.
All pieces can move as far as they like in any direction
(including diagonally). But the border of the safe zone can only be crossed
once. So jumping over it does not work. Neither jumping over the zone, nor
that of a playing piece.
If a pawn is now selected for the next move, all possible spaces that can be
entered are highlighted in yellow. The current cursor field and the field
with the selected pawn also flash. The selection can now be made or removed
by clicking on the selected piece again.
In each new game, chance determines who is allowed to open the game, i.e. who
starts. The joystick or the keyboard (with cursor keys and return) can be
used to move.
A freeware game (C) 2025 Frank Abbing
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Some useful keyboard shortcuts
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[PAUSE] - stop/continue game
[F9] - quick load game state
[F12] - quick save game state (still stored after leaving the site)
[F11] - toggle fullscreen mode
[ScrollLock] - quick switch control ports
[PageDown] - make a screenshot (320x200)