In my computer programming class back in high school (1992), a friend of mine programmed a really cool game. And although he wrote the code from scratch, I’m certain the idea for the game was NOT original. I’m sure the game he based it on or a very similiar one must be a flash game by now.
He called the game Boogerz ('cause the game pieces were jelly-like blobs I guess).
It was played on a grid (sometimes with unusable squares). Each of the two player started with two “boogerz” in opposite corners. The object was to fill the board with boogerz, he who had the most of his color at the end won.
On your turn you would select one of your boogerz, and then you could either:
select an adjacent square, and the booger would split to fill both squares (increasing your booger count).
or:
select a square one removed, and the booger would “jump” to that square instead of splitting.
Any squares adjacent to the “new” booger or “jumped” booger which were occupied by boogerz of the opposite color would change to your color. This made it possible to win by also converting all the other boogerz to your color.
Sounds like a number of games-- one big one was called Ataxx. There may be a clue to the direct inspiration of the game for your friend in the “Ataxx Clones” portion of the linked article…
This game, or something very similar, was featured as one of the puzzles in the PC Game The 11th Hour. I’ve also seen a version on a hexagonal board in one of those “50 different games” bar-top arcade game systems.
The version in The 11th Hour was hexagonal, IIRC. The 7th Guest (the game to which 11th Hour was a sequel) included the standard four corner version as an optional puzzle. It was accessed by looking in the microscope.
Yes, Ataxx is clearly the inspiration. I like his version better though. It featured different levels with different boards. And the animation of the bouncing, jiggly buggerz was pretty cool.