Once again I am showing my lack of game design skills with an SVG game built for my little boy. When I was growing up, we called this game Dots.

The rules are fairly simple.

• Click between any two horizontal or vertical pair of dots to draw a line.
• If the line completes a unit square, you get a point and another turn.
• If the line doesn't complete a square, the other player gets a turn.
• When all squares have been completed, the player with the most squares wins.

Although the rules are simple, the game can be surprisingly challenging. (Especially if you need to entertain a six year old boy.)

At present, this is a two-player game. Playing it by yourself will be somewhat less than exciting. The scoreboard on the right tells whose turn it is and how many points each player has. Remember, only horizontal and vertical lines count. The different levels of difficulty are determined by the size of the board. The larger the board, the more strategy is needed to set up a favorable endgame.

• SVG Dots: default board
• SVG Dots: easy (10x10)
• SVG Dots: challenging (25x25)
• SVG Dots: max size

Future Directions

I was exploring options for a one-player version of the game. As soon as I can work out a reasonable set of code to play against the user, I'll post that one as well.

Update 2022/11/19

I haven't looked at this game in more than a decade and when I did, I found a bug. Pretty easy to fix, so now dots is working again. Change to either JavaScript or the DOM.