What is it?

This page contains an explanation of what Metasquares is, what Metasquarer is, and why you should care.

Metasquares used to be an online game that would run on Mac or Windows machines. Made by MetaCreations in the summer of 1996, Metasquares became very popular very quickly; it had over 80,000 users at the apex of its popularity.

The gameplay is simple: Two players take turns placing pieces on an 8x8 board. These pieces are immobile once placed. The object of the game is to make squares with these pieces. The larger the square, the more points it's worth. Squares may be tipped at any angle. You win when you get over 150 points with at least a 15 point lead over your opponent.

Metasquares was taken offline by AOL in September of 1997. Shortly thereafter, the webmaster of this site created Metasquarer, a program that allows players to play Metasquares online again. At first, Metasquarer was an attempt to create an AI that could play Metasquares, but after determining the APIs necessary to control the board, I decided to build a network layer that spoke the IRC protocol to utilize this capability, as the original application did not have an AI anyway. Originally an application piggybacking on the original game's engine, Metasquarer became a standalone game with the release of version 5.0. It includes its own rating system and a fully-functional IRC client. Metasquarer was rated 5 cows , the highest rating available, on TuCows. It had a rating over 90% on Download.com before they required payment to list software.