PALACE

PALACE RULES

Goal
The goal of Palace is to break your opponent below 4 spheres. Each side starts with eight spheres (board plus reserve).

Preparation
The palace is the whole board — five 8×2 glass bands at heights 1 to 3, starting 1-2-3-2-1.
Each player's eight spare spheres wait off-board, one lined up before each column of their entrance row.
Each reserve sphere can only enter on its own column.

Gameplay
Players alternate turns, taking one action per turn: PLACE a sphere or ROLL a sphere.

1. Place:
   Set a sphere onto its own free level-1 entrance pane.

2. Roll:
   The roll is the only way a sphere moves — a single committed slide in a straight line, resolved by the terrain it crosses.
   Flat: keep rolling until a wall or a sphere. There is no railing — roll off the building's edge and the sphere falls and shatters, gone.
   One step up: hop up onto the next pane and stop, but only from the pane right below the step. A flat run that reaches a rise later just stops at the wall.
   Two-plus up: a wall; stop before it.
   One step down: drop and keep rolling on the lower level.
   Two-plus down: drop and stay where you land.

3. Carom:
   Roll into a sphere on the same tier and you shove it exactly one pane along, taking the pane it vacated.
   Shove a foe over the rim to break it.
   A sphere backed by a step, a wall, or another sphere won't budge — and rolling too far sends your own sphere over the edge.

4. Smash:
   A sphere you drop onto — of either color — is smashed and removed from the game; you take its pane.
   Get above your foe and roll down onto them. Beware smashing your own.

5. The Bands:
   Whole bands rise and sink via the gold handles on the west edge (or LEVEL CONTROL in the menu). Spheres ride their band.
   Raising a band by two makes an impassable wall; by one, a step you can hop.
   Lower the ground to turn a foe's flat roll into a fatal drop — terrain is how you set up the kill.

End
The game ends when a player is broken below four spheres.
The remaining player is declared the winner.

Game Design: Simon Allmer