Play checkers against the computer, but not a faceless one
Most ways to play checkers against the computer give you a board and a difficulty menu. Checkers: A Mill Town Story gives you people. It is a checkers game for Windows set in 1851, where every opponent has a name, a face, a trade and a voice, and plays at a strength that matches who they are.
There are 22 of them, spread across four rooms: the tap room of the Weavers' Arms, a mechanics' institute night class, a tournament at the Corn Exchange, and a single match in Glasgow. The cast and a narrator speak 339 recorded lines between them. Before each game there is a short conversation, and what you say, from offering a penny to asking for odds, changes the terms you play on and how that person treats you next time.
Every opponent remembers. Your record against each one is kept and told back to you in words, so a rival you have beaten twice talks to you differently from a stranger.
Checkers rules used in the game
The game plays English draughts, the version most people in the US know as checkers. Each side starts with 12 men on the dark squares of an 8x8 board, and black makes the first move. A game ends when one player has no piece or no legal move left, which means being boxed in loses just as surely as being cleaned out.
Draws are real too. If 40 moves go by on each side without a capture or a crowning, the game is drawn, which stops two kings chasing each other forever. The main menu has a short page called How draughts goes for anyone sitting down for the first time.
Do you have to jump in checkers?
Yes, and the jump does not stop after one piece. If the square you land on offers another capture, you keep jumping until none is left, and the whole chain is one move. The one exception is crowning: a man that reaches the far row mid-chain is crowned and stops there, even if a king could have carried on.
When more than one capture is open, the choice is yours. Nothing forces you to take the longest chain, so a player who can take one piece safely or three into a trap is free to pick the safe one. Strong opponents build whole games around that, offering a man that you are obliged to take.
Climbing from the pub to the championship
There is no difficulty menu in the story. You start in the tap room, and every room after it is earned by winning games against the players already in front of you. The people get sharper as the venues get grander: the pub regulars miss tactics that the institute crowd sees, and the tournament field punishes loose play.
Losing has a cost too. What you say before a game, whether you play for a penny or ask a stronger player for a man of odds, decides the stakes, and the opponent carries the result into your next meeting.
2 player checkers and quick games
A quick game skips the story. Choose Somebody from the town to face one opponent at a strength you pick, as black or white, which is the fastest way to play checkers against the computer at a set level. For 2 player checkers, the Two players mode puts two people on one board and leaves the computer out of it.
