There is a hundred-year-old game that mathematicians still argue about, and its rules fit in one breath: two colonels split their soldiers across several fronts, in secret, and each front falls to the bigger force. That is Colonel Blotto, and ROCKPOOL is Blotto gone to the seaside. Twelve shells, five pools, three tides, and a person on the other side of the water trying to think your thoughts before you do.
Why it exists
Card games discovered something big recently: when both players commit their move in secret and the reveal lands on both screens at once, an ordinary turn becomes theatre. Commit first, reveal after: tension, bluffing, prediction. ROCKPOOL is that drama with everything else stripped away. No cards to collect, no rules beyond the one breath, just the reveal. And because the tides are staged, every reveal is also a confession: pile into the deep on tide one and you have told them where you live. Hold back and you may arrive at a pool already lost. The game is not the pools. The game is the person.
It plays like post, on purpose. Place your shells with your morning coffee; the tide turns whenever both hands are down. Between two people who know each other, one small blind decision a day is somehow enough to think about at dinner.
How it works
Three tides, four shells each
Each tide, both players secretly spread four shells across the five pools, any split, four in one pool included. When both are down, the tide turns and both hands show at once. Shells never move again.
Most pools wins
After the third tide, each pool belongs to whoever holds more shells in it. A tied pool goes to the crab, and the crab keeps it. Hold three of the five and the shelf is yours.
The board remembers
Every settled shell stays visible to both of you, so the mind games compound: what they showed you, what you chose to show them, and what neither of you has spent yet.
A rematch tally with a memory
The room keeps the running score of games won. Between rivals, that little number is the real game.
The quiet parts
What your opponent has committed this tide never travels to your device until both hands are down; the room's server keeps it, so there is nothing on the page to peek at. No account, first names only, an invite you email yourself, and rooms that sweep themselves away after two idle months.