Package FAQ

Package FAQ

v. 1.0
by Tyler "t-bob" Hauck 
Last updated 5/26/2001

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DISCLAIMER

This FAQ is my work.  You may not charge for it or change its content
blah blah blah blah blah, you all know the routine, I'm sure.

I would like to note that I've searched high and low for who developed
and published this game, to no avail.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================
WHAT IS PACKAGE?
WHERE CAN I FIND PACKAGE?
MENUS & GAME MODES
HOW TO PLAY
THANKS

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WHAT IS PACKAGE?

Package is a Japanese puzzle game for PCs.  It's a Tetris-type game,
with original and very addictive gameplay.

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WHERE CAN I FIND PACKAGE?

The best place to go is http://otakuworld.com.  Follow the hyperlink
trail into Giniko-Chan's Anime Toychest, then to the Games section.
You can download a self-extracting zip file from there.

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MENUS & GAME MODES

When you start Package, there will be three windows; the left is for
player 1, the right is for player 2, and the center is for showing
which piece is next for each player and how many plays of a given color
each player has made, displayed via bar graphs (there can be 3 players,
this is gone over later in this section).

The control schemes are presented visually at the bottom of their
respective windows.  They are, as far as I know, not redefineable.  To
play as player 1, simply select your game using player 1's controls;
same deal with player 2.

To move around the menus, use the directional keys; the left action key
selects, and the right key cancels or goes back to the previous menu.

The four options on the main menu are:

-SINGLE PLAY
-VS MODE
-OPTION
-MANUAL

SINGLE PLAY
  Single Play is just that: a one-player game.  You go through the
  levels on your own, with the objectives being to get to the highest
  level possible and/or making the longest chains (see the HOW TO PLAY
  section for more details on that).

VS MODE
  VS Mode is a head-to-head game, either against a second player or
  against the computer.  To play a humans vs. computer game, select VS
  MODE and then the desired starting level, and the computer will
  control whichever player you are not controlling.  To play head-to-
  head, each player must select VS MODE before the other has selected 
  their desired starting level.  Then, both players select a starting 
  level (note that it can be different), and the game begins.

  VS Mode also has one very important additional feature: the new
  function of chains.  When you perform a chain, blocks of varying
  number and size are dumped into your opponent's playing field.  The
  more hits, the more blocks, and the more blocks affected during a
  single hit, the bigger some of the blocks will be.  There are
  three sizes; I'm not sure how many colors you have to cancel out
  in a single hit to get which size, but basically, the more blocks
  you affect in a single hit, the bigger the block is going to be
  that gets dumped (note that all three sizes are square, no long
  blocks ever get dropped).  Also, the small size blocks dropped on
  your opponent usually have one quadrant of "brick color."  See the
  paragraph on colors in the HOW TO PLAY section for more info on this.
  This may sound a bit confusing, but if you just try it out in the
  game, it makes perfect sense.  This "disrupt your opponent" is also a
  pretty standard feature in puzzle games now, so you've probably seen
  it before.

OPTION
  This lets you edit the gameplay options.  Once you click on this,
  you'll be presented with two sub-menus (use left and right to switch
  between the two)

  -ADJUST       -MUSIC
  -SCORE        -SOUND
  -LAYOUT       -HARFTONE
  -PLAYMODE     -BOMB
  -TITLE        -COM LEVEL
  -GAME END     -GAME END

  ADJUST
    Haven't figured out what this does yet...

  SCORE
    View the high score and most hits rankings.

  LAYOUT
    Toggles between a horizontal or verticle layout for the game's
    windows.

  PLAYMODE
    Toggles between having two or three playing fields available (yes,
    VS Mode can have 3 players).

  TITLE
    Ends the game and returns to the main menu.  Note that in VS Mode,
    this counts as a forefeiture.

  GAME END
    Exits Package.

  MUSIC
    Selects between either the two selections of background music
    available or silence.

  SOUND
    Toggles the sound effects on or off.

  HARFTONE
    My guess is as good as yours.

  BOMB
    Toggles bombs on or off for use in the game (see HOW TO PLAY for
    details on what bombs are).

  COM LEVEL
    Selects between the three available AI difficulty levels.  A is
    the toughest, while C is the easiest (I hope you can figure out
    what B is).

  GAME END
    See above.

MANUAL
  This presents a brief visual tutorial of how to play.  It's actually
  quite useful, and although the text is garbled, it makes the gameplay
  pretty clear.

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HOW TO PLAY

The premise of Package is rather simple: line up two colors and they
will disappear.  All blocks have four colors, and come in one of three
varieties: a square with the four quadrants arranged in an X; a long
piece identical to the square, except for an elongated right quadrant;
and a verticle version of the long piece (extended bottom quadrant).

You start with four possible colors: red, blue, green, and white.  At
level 4, orange is added into the mix.  At level 8, purple is
introduced, and then finally, at level 12, dark green is the last
color to appear.

Note that in VS Mode, there's an additional color, the "brick color."
It appears as a quadrant filled with gray-colored brick, and it behaves
just like a normal color would: two touching brick quadrants cancel out.
However, since the brick color only appears in blocks dropped on you by
your opponent in VS Mode, it is nigh impossible to do this with any
degree of consistency.  Generally, you have to get rid of these blocks
by eliminating all the other quadrants, or using a bomb on a brick
quadrant (see the paragraph on bombs below).

When two colors cancel eachother out, the two adjacent color quadrants
fill the space evenly.  When only one color remains, the piece
disappears altogether.  Look at the diagrams below for two examples of
this happening.

 _____                                      ____
|X X/|  Let's say that the "XX"           |  |  |
|A_/B|  quadrant is canceled              |A |B |
| /C |  out.  We would then have... -->   | /C |
|/___|                                    |/___|

 ____________                           ____________
|  A /      |  Again, quadrant "XX"   |  A  /      |
|X _/ C     |  is eliminated, which   |____/  C    |
|X /B       |  gives us this... -->   |  B        |
|_/_________|                         |___________|


Okay, see how that works?  Pretty simple.  However, there's a catch.
Some quandrants will be "barred"; that is, they have a thicker line
on their border than others.  These are subject to different rules.
When a barred quandrant and a non-barred quandrant touch, nothing
happens.  However, if two barred quandrants touch, they will cancel
out.  And if the quandrant adjacent to a barred quandrant is
eliminated, the bar will disappear.  For example, in the above
diagram (the long piece), if quadrant C was barred, it would not
have been affected when XX was eliminated.  However, if quandrants A
or B were barred, their bars would have disappeared when XX was
eliminated.  Get it?  By the way, any number of quandrants can be
barred on a given block, from none to all.

When you make a play as above, the bar in the center of the screen of
the corresponding color will rise a bit (for example, if "XX" was blue
in the above two examples, your blue bar would have raised two
notches).  When one of the bars gets high enough, you'll hear a "ding,"
and you will advance to the next level.

The controls are also pretty simple.  Your left/right directional keys
move the blocks left or right.  Down speeds up the block's descent.
Up pauses the game, which brings up the Option menu (press the right
action key to return to the game).  Your left action key rotates the
blocks counterclockwise, while the right action key rotates them
clockwise.

Now, about "bombs."  When you reach certain levels (5, 7, 9, 11, 13,
14, and every level after that), your next piece will be a bomb.  A
bomb is a little block that looks to be a little less than 1/4 the
size of a square block.  Wherever you place it, it will eliminate ALL
the quandrants on the screen of whichever color is touching its bottom
side.  It can also be used on the brick color in VS Mode and on barred-
off quadrants.  This can lead to some pretty huge plays, and in VS
Mode, bombs can thus be incredibly dangerous.  I was playing against
the computer once, and with a bomb, managed to get an almost screen-
clearing, 14-hit chain!  It literally filled the computer's screen with
blocks.

On the subject of chains, here's how they work: when you make one play,
it counts as one "hit."  Well, remember how the colors shift after a
hit?  Let's say that you have a barred blue quandrant lined up with
a non-barred blue quandrant.  You elimiate the barred quandrant's
adjacent quadrant.  That will eliminate the bar; you've just made a 2-
hit chain!  You can also do this with just the way the colors shift
after a hit.  Note also that while hits are chaining together, you will
still be able to drop pieces.  Once the piece is at rest, the game will
wait for the current hit to finish, then add whatever the new piece
will do to the next hit.  It's thus possible to get two or even 3
chains going at once, or to make chains even longer.  The possibilities
are endless.

And now, the end.  It's Game Over when you have pieces stacked all the
way up to the top of the playing field, just like most puzzle games.
However, even though the blocks usually enter at the center of the
screen, if you have blocks stacked up there, the new ones will enter to
the side.  The game won't end until they have literally nowhere to go.

Now, some final miscellaneous gameplay notes:

- You can see how many blocks are going to fall in VS Mode, because
  before they do, you'll see coins floating at the top of your screen,
  one for each block, and a different color representing the three
  sizes (yellow, blue, and orange, in ascending order).

- The higher the level, the faster the blocks fall, just like in
  Tetris.

- Either player can pause the game, but the player that paused it must
  be the one to unpause it.

- The game actually says how many hits a chain is, like in fighting
  games (how cute).


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THANKS

What would a FAQ be without gratuitous shout-outs?  Thanks to:

 GameFAQs.com, for reasons you should all be aware of.
 otakuworld.com, for having cool shit to download for free.
 heysuburbia.com, for giving me a home for my writing.

 AND NO ONE ELSE!  HA HA HA.

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EOF.