Eternity

Eternity (Eternity 1.0.2, also catalogued as 'Eternity: the Battle of the Elements') is a turn-based strategy board game for the classic Mac, released as $15 shareware by Divinity Software. One to four players, human or computer, take charge of fire, air, earth, or water and fight a daily war for tokens scattered in a neutral 'void' at the center of the board.

Core loop

Each game day, every element's tokens spawn in the void. Players move pawns out from their corner base, grab a token, and try to fight their way home with it. Other elements use their pawns to intercept and ambush, so the route back is usually more dangerous than the trip out. If one element manages to recover all of its tokens, it 'rules for the day' and that round ends in its favor.

Solo and multiplayer

Eternity supports one to four players in any mix of human and AI. The computer ships with three difficulty tiers, so it is workable as a solitaire strategy game and also as a party game on a single Mac with hot-seat play. The narrative framing (fire vs. air vs. earth vs. water as eternal rivals) is the same regardless of who is at the controls.

Look and feel

The game is presented top-down, with stylized elemental pieces and a clear board grid. Per the Macintosh Garden listing it targets PowerPC Macs running System 7.0 or later, in 16-bit color at 640x480 or higher, light requirements that match its turn-based, sprite-driven design.

Developer

Eternity is the work of James Maestro under the Divinity Software label, released around 2000. It is one of a small set of original board-style strategy games that appeared on the Mac shareware scene in the late OS 9 / early OS X transition window.

Shareware terms

The download is fully playable as shareware with a $15 registration fee requested by the author. There is no time limit baked into the build; the registration appeal is in the documentation and at the support address listed in the original submission.