Table Feast 1412

In the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and twelve, in a great hall grown cold and ill-kept, the sky above the rafters opened.

What fell was not rain. It was provision and it was refuse, tumbling down together without order or mercy — cans and tubes and bags of good things mixed among the sweepings of the whole realm. The lords had fled. The servants had fled. Only the furniture remained.

And so the last table of that hall took up its duty, as tables do: to bear what belongs upon it, and to suffer nothing else.

Thy Controls

1 Control Pad — Left and right slide thy table along the floor. Up and down choose thy mode on the title screen.

2 A · B · X · Y — Hustle. Hold any of the four to move at double speed. All four do the same thing; use whichever falls under thy thumb.

3 START — Begin the feast. Press again during play to pause, and once more to resume. SELECT is not used.

4 L & R — Spend whatever thou art carrying. The table has found a use for shoulders after all.

In two-player, the second table is driven from controller port 2.

How to Play

Before the first thing falls, the hall sets out its terms: what is worth catching and what it pays, what will cost thee a life, and what may be carried in thy hand. Read it, then press Start.

The opening briefing: the three good items with their scores, the eight foul ones, and the five power items

The terms, before the first drop

Things fall from the top of the screen. Slide thy table beneath the ones that belong and away from the ones that do not.

A thing is caught when it meets the boards — the flat top surface of the table — and not merely when it passes nearby. Catching one of the three good things scores. Catching anything foul costs one of thy three lives, shakes the hall, and stains the screen red. Thou hast no defence but thy feet.

Letting a good thing fall past thee and smash on the floor costs no life, but it breaks thy combo, which is usually the more expensive loss.