Monika's Tic Tac Toe

Tic Tac Toe with two players, where one of them is a computer named Monika — that's all you need to know. No graphical or audio frills, just a game board in text mode and a simple menu. Something between a game and an educational program from the days when people were still writing their little programs in Turbo Pascal.

It's a classic in its purest form: nine squares, alternating turns, an objective as old as the game itself — create three marks in a row. The computer plays by fixed strategies that aren't very complex. It plays reasonably, but without any real initiative. Controls are handled with the cursor or numbers — nothing more, nothing less.

Playing happens quickly, because Tic Tac Toe isn't a game you play for hours. You either win, draw, or lose. Everything plays out on screen regardless of how you feel. There's no challenge here — if you have a bit of sense, you'll see what to do, and you won't have fun with the computer. It plays without errors, it's precise, but soulless.

Monika's Tic Tac Toe is from the era when computer games were written for entertainment and logic practice. It's not a game you'd look back on with nostalgia — only with the knowledge that it was simple and nothing more. In the context of 2006, it was more instruction than entertainment.

Today it's a curiosity. If you want to try a programmer's debut written in DOS or exercise your thinking without the luxury of modern graphics, it's here. Otherwise, you'd rather play something that at least fails with style.