Crocotile is a game of re-organizing tiles. Each game starts with the tiles in a scrambled state, and you must reposition them to their solved state, so that every set of 3 tiles contains the image of a crocodile, and so that the colors are in the right columns and the numbers are in the right rows (such as the WHITE-2 crocodile in the example above). The game includes eight different puzzle sizes from small and easy (2 rows and 6 columns) to large and difficult (7 rows and 12 columns).

You can move only one tile at a time, and only the tiles that are on the top or bottom of a column. You can only move tiles from the bottom of a column to the bottom of another column, and you can only move tiles from the top of a column to the top of another column. (Tiles automatically slide up and down within a column to make room.) If you have a completely empty column (like the second column in the example above), then that will allow you to move a tile from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to the top (since that's the same as two individual moves, first moving the tile to the empty column where it is both the top AND bottom tile, and then moving it from there to the target column on the top or the bottom. The moved tile must match the tile it's moved next to (above or below) in two of its three attributes. Each tile has a color, a number, and a crocodile body part (the graphics can change radically with different image sets). For example, the 1-WHITE-HEAD at the top of the fourth column above could be moved to the top of the first column (where the 1 and HEAD would match the 1-RED-HEAD), to the second column (which is empty), to the top of the third column (where the 1 and WHITE would match the 1-WHITE-TAIL), to the top of the fifth column (where the 1 and WHITE would match the 1-WHITE-BODY), or to the bottom of the fourth column (where the WHITE and HEAD would match the 2-WHITE-HEAD). Of course, you wouldn't WANT to make any of those moves, since the 1-WHITE-HEAD is already in its proper "solved" location. :-)

REQUIREMENTS:

Any one of Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP or compatible
(Does NOT work on Windows 3.x!)
Minimum of 32M bytes of RAM
19M bytes of disk space

NOTE: the disk space requirements can be minimized by deleting unwanted/unused tileset images, which take up the majority of the disk space.

Extra tile sets created by users will be made available here as they are sent to me.

NOTE: After downloading the file, you can run it to install the tile sets, or manually unZIP it, placing the resulting .BMP file(s) into your C:\EKS\CT\IMAGES folder. The tile set will then be selectable within the Crocotile program. (The actual folder may vary if you installed the game somewhere other than the default location.)

NOTE: all of the tilesets in CT_TILES below are included on the CD of the licensed Crocotile, but are NOT included with the DOWNLOADED licensed Crocotile. So if you buy the game on CD, you don't need the CT_TILES file, but it you buy the game online via download, you WILL want to download and install CT_TILES.

CT_TILES - JKStile1, JKStile2, JMKcrocotile, JMKcrocotile2, Reptile, CrocotileJungle, and Stripetile. (June 9, 2004)

Best Solutions

The game keeps track of the shortest solution that players achieve, and those solutions are recorded in the 1CTBEST, 2CTBEST, 3CTBEST...8CTBEST files in the C:\EKS\CT game folder (or wherever the game is installed on your computer). The licensed game comes with the best set of solutions (for some of the puzzles that) that was available at the time the CD was made. If, after playing the game for a while, you'd like to contribute your best solutions, ZIP up all of the ?CTBEST files from your CT folder and email me the file. I'll merge them into my current Best Solutions files and post them here as ?CTMERGE files. (You can read about 'best' and 'merge' files in the Crocotile Help screens.) You can then download these ?CTMERGE files from here, place them in your CT folder, and then (within the game) select each puzzle size and click on Game-Merge_best_solutions. This will merge the ?CTMERGE file for that puzzle size into your ?CTBEST file for that puzzle size, and the results of the merge will be written to the ASCII text file CTMERGE.LOG.

(There are currently no newer 'best solution' files than the ones included with the licensed game.)

Everett Kaser Software
PO Box 403
Albany OR 97321-0117
Phone: (541) 928-5259 between 8am and 8pm Pacific Time daily.
email: everett@kaser.com