Othello is a board game translated to steam, also known as reversi, it involves playing on a board of black and white stones which can be flipped as you play your pieces to flip every one of your opponents pieces between where you place your stone and any connecting stones of your colour on diagonal and straight lines, and you have to strategically place your pieces in order to end up with the most of your colour stones at the end of the game to win.
The game is noted to be easy to learn but take a lifetime to master as strategies constantly develop and while it is easy to pick up in order to defeat the better players you have to adapt and learn new strategies. There are AI modes with sometimes unfair computer opposition as well as online ELO rated matches and local play options so you can play this either against people online or as a friendly local game with just one copy of the game.
There are a few glitches I have noticed in that sometimes the game will allow opponents to take turns when it isn’t their turn or you to take double turns, and sometimes even place the wrong coloured piece and glitch the game entirely by the board somehow flipping pieces which were unflippable as though someone tampered with the board while you were away. This is a little unfortunate especially in an elo rated game, but I have reported these issues to the developers and hopefully they will be resolved and removed so that the game can be enjoyable without faults.
Another problem is the timing, while you can set games to be 1 minute, to an hour in integers the timer doesn’t start until your opponent joins the game and if this happens while you are away waiting for someone to join they can time you out and you will automatically lose in between, and the fact that you only then have the option of 1 day or 7 days and no timings between mean you can be waiting up to 7 days for your opponent to make a move when perhaps you would like to limit it to 2 days, although live play is more fun catching someone online while the game is relatively new is difficult.
The problem is that this is a board game, and while it is fun and enjoyable the market is obviously going to be smaller than in other games available on steam, so it might take a while to build up games to a level that there are abundant games so you can always setup a game and enjoy a live match, but it is still enjoyable over a timed basis longer than this just waiting for days and perhaps forgetting as a result of the wait can be an issue for me.
Other than these faults which can be easily enjoyed it is good to have a reversi game on steam for times when I’m not feeling like playing something major, and in university I always used to play reversi that came with xp, however latest windows versions lack this game so having a steam version becomes an essential if you’ve always enjoyed the game. I would also suggest that perhaps other layouts like in battle panel in ergheiz could be a fun variation for starters in the game, opening up to new strategies and evolving gameplay beyond the traditional 4 square central beginning, but who is to say if this will be taken up.
Either way if you enjoy reversi this is the game for you as now you can play it again, and rank up your elo against other players on steam.
Get othello on steam now (also known as reversi) at http://store.steampowered.com/app/307430