Poly Off

Poly-Off is a solitaire board puzzle for the classic Macintosh, distributed via Info-Mac by STH at Penn State. The goal is deceptively simple: turn every piece on the board grey. Clicking a piece flips its color and the colors of some of its neighbors, with the affected pattern depending on the shape of the switch you press.

Lights-Out Style Puzzle

Poly-Off belongs to the Lights Out family of toggle puzzles. Each click ripples through a small neighborhood, so clearing the board requires planning sequences of moves whose side effects cancel out rather than just chasing individual squares.

Variable Switch Shapes

The author notes that the changing-neighbor pattern depends on the shape of the switch on the clicked piece. Different switch shapes give the puzzle a polyomino flavor and let one ruleset generate a wide variety of board behaviors.

Deeper Than It Looks

The release notes warn that the game is not as easy as it looks: even the easiest board has more than one million reachable states. Solving harder boards is closer to a search problem than a casual click-fest.

Distribution

Poly-Off 1.02 was uploaded to the Info-Mac Archive under game/brd as freeware, and it runs on classic 68k and early PowerPC Macs.