The Soul Remembers

In this Death Match, memorize criteria that are modified throughout the game and find more sets of runes satisfy the criteria than your opponent.

Designer(s): e_is_cool, elara	Match Type: DM (for 2 players)
Featured in: The Genius: Heaven and Hell

Final Match 1: The Soul Remembers

Through reincarnation, life after life, the world changes, the body changes, but the soul always remembers…

This is a memory game. You are not allowed to take notes of any kind during the game, even for the non-memory aspects of the game.

RULES

This game involves a board of runes (symbols) each round, as well as a set of criteria.

A rune has three components: A background color, a shape, and a shape color. The background color can be black, grey, or white; the shape can be circle, square, or triangle; the shape color can be red, yellow, or blue. (In other words, these are equivalent to tiles of Gyul Hap.)

Boards are guaranteed to be rectangular, so this is a possible board:

There are some criteria that will be used throughout the game, labeled with positive integers starting at 1. A set of runes that satisfies all criteria is known as a valid set. New criteria given will have strictly increasing labels.

The initial set of criteria will be revealed at the beginning of the game for 1 minute, then will be removed.

Each round will consist of a board of runes, and will last 5 minutes. At any time, a player may call a set of runes by typing out their locations. If any of the runes have already been used, you don't get a point and are not locked out. Otherwise, regardless of if your set is valid or invalid, you are locked out of answering for 30 seconds. If the set is valid, you gain a point; otherwise, you lose a point.

If your set is invalid, you will be publicly told the IDs of the criteria the set doesn't satisfy. (You will not be told what the criteria are.)

Runes in a valid set will be removed from the board and cannot be used again.

Beginning with Round 2, at the start of each round, some criteria will be added, modified, or removed. Players will be given 15 seconds per change to process the changes (for instance, if two changes occur, players have 30 seconds), and then the message with the changes is removed.

Here are some rules on how changes can work:

You may not necessarily be told what the original rule is; you should already know it.
Whenever something is removed (either a full criterion or a specific word in a criterion), it will never come back or be tested in the future; players can forget about it.
You do not need to memorize the specific wording of the criteria; the only changes that are tested are based on the semantics. For instance, "The color in Criterion 2 is changed to Blue" is a valid change; "Word #5 in Criterion 2 is changed to Blue" is not a valid change.

This game goes on for 10 rounds. Whoever has more points at the end wins. If it's a tie, there is a tiebreaker round with no time limit; if the tiebreaker round ends in a tie, the player who was leading in the tiebreaker round last wins.

SPIRITS

There are two ways to invoke a spirit in this FM. To do so, declare that you are invoking a spirit (including the name of the spirit you are invoking), along with how you would like to invoke the spirit.

For the Memory Invocation, you may invoke it at any time. For the Time Invocation, you may only invoke it before the start of a round.

Memory Invocation:

Privately know your choice of one of the current criteria.

Attuned: Know ALL of the current criteria instead.

Time Invocation:

In the next round, gain a 20 second head start for viewing the board.

Attuned: Gain a 60 second head start instead.

EXAMPLE

In this example, the initial criteria are as follows:

Criterion 1: There are exactly two runes.

Criterion 2: Runes must have different shapes.

Criterion 3: At least one rune must be red.

The first grid is as follows:

Player 1 buzzes with A1 and C2, which is valid. They gain a point, and are unable to resubmit for 30 seconds.

Player 2 buzzes with B1 and A3, which is invalid. They lose a point, are told that their set fails Criterion 3, and are unable to resubmit for 30 seconds.

Player 1 buzzes with A1 and A2, and is told that this is repeats a rune. They don't earn or lose points, and are able to resubmit immediately if they wish.

The round eventually ends. Afterwards, the following changes are made:

Criterion 1: The number in the criterion is incremented by 1.

Criterion 2: This criterion is removed.

Criterion 4: No two runes may be orthogonally adjacent.

Players are given 45 seconds with these changes before they are removed.

Now, the rules look like this:

Criterion 1: There are exactly three runes.

Criterion 3: At least one rune must be red.

Criterion 4: No two runes may be orthogonally adjacent.

This is the grid for Round 2:

In this grid, for instance, A1, A3, C1 is a valid set, while B2, B3 is not a valid set, failing Criteria 1, 3, and 4.

=====

Clarification: If the Time Invocation is used, the player with a head start is able to submit sets during that time. (You can identify them by coordinate publicly).

Clarification: Due to player request I'm switching ABC... to the columns and 123... to rows. So C1 is the top right corner of a 3x3.

Clarification: In the tiebreaker round, the 5-minute cap on the round is removed; the 30-second lockout is not removed.

Clarification: Since I'll likely be hosting this solo in the end, let's make some timing stuff a little less ambiguous.

I will not confirm correctness of sets prior to the 30 second lockout being over. (Afterwards I will post whether it's correct.) As such, it may be possible for a player's current proposed set to be correct, incorrect, or a duplicate depending on whether the other player's previously proposed set is correct. In these cases, you will not know whether you are locked out immediately, but if the second submitter's set uses a duplicate I will skip over it and read a resubmission.

(Equivalently, you can "queue" a second submission up. I will only process the second submission if it uses no duplicates, and ignore it otherwise. This does mean that if your first submission passed, you'll have to resubmit your second one. Please do not abuse this and queue like ten submissions up.)

The Soul Remembers

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