Automatafl

Open a table

Two players · no matchmaking here · you invite them yourself

A table is minted with two seat links. Keep one, send the other; whoever opens a link takes that seat, and nobody else can. There is no shared lobby to race for and no public table to wander into.

Each seat has 10 minutes to make its move. A seat that lets that run out forfeits the table, so an abandoned match ends instead of waiting forever.

Here on your own? Open a table anyway and play both sides: the next page shows you how, and it is the real game under the real rules, not a demo. Or play The Descent, which is a game for one.

The board

A real opening position, mid-turn: one attractor has been picked up, and every square it can legally move to is lit. This is the board you get.

The rules, in one screen

• The board is 11×11. It holds repulsors (R · the angular pale blades, spikes pointing OUT), attractors (A · the round brass discs, spikes pointing IN), and ONE automaton (@ · the violet ring, the only thing on the board that glows). Pieces move like a rook: any distance along a row or a column, never diagonally, never onto the automaton. Either seat may push ANY piece: the pieces are shared, and that is what makes the collision interesting.
• You do not take turns. Both seats seal a move at the same time. The round runs commit → reveal → resolve: you seal, your opponent seals, both open, then ONE turn applies both.
• The seal is the game. While your move is sealed your opponent is not shown it, but be clear about who is doing the hiding. Your move sits on this server in plain text until you open it, so what keeps it secret is this server declining to tell them, not a code the two of you exchanged that nobody else can read. Trust the host or do not play here.
• A CLASH marks the square and re-opens the round. If the two moves fight over the same square, that round does not happen at all: the contested coordinate is MARKED (it paints as a dead × square), the board FREEZES exactly as it was, and the seats the clash named owe a FRESH move, which may not use a marked square at either end. The turn counter does not move until a round comes back clean, and the markers die when it does. Every re-entry has to burn a NEW square, so a turn cannot re-open forever.
• The automaton then steps, once the round finally resolves, pulled toward attractors and pushed from repulsors along each axis. Drive it onto one of YOUR two goal corners and you win.

Every press is re-run against the rules before anything is written down: an illegal move is refused and nothing happens. And when the match is over, anyone can replay it from the first move to the last and watch it come out the same way. That replay happens on this server, not on a blockchain, and no public network is involved.