This web page gives you information about, and access to, an online, multi-player (multiplayer) version of the popular Puerto Rico board game, for the Windows and Linux and MacOS operating systems.
Once the Curl RTE is installed (see below!), you can simply click here to run the game as a web applet. Note that clicking this link before the Curl RTE is installed will either ask you what to do with the file "game.curl", or will display it as textual source code, neither of which is very useful.
For more information about the Puerto Rico board game, see the Puerto Rico page at www.boardgamegeek.com, and/or the Rio Grande Games website (the publishers of the Puerto Rico board game in the USA). See the online rules for the complete rules to the board game.
Here is a screen shot of a game in progress.
In order to play, you will first need to install version 6.0 of the Curl © RTE (Runtime Environment), version 6.0, available (free) via the Curl RTE download page at www.curl.com for Windows (an 8 meg installer) and Linux (a 16 meg rpm). These installers are signed by Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation, the parent company of Curl, Inc..
A beta release for the Macintosh (MacOSX) is now available here, and several players appear to be using it.
Once the Curl RTE is installed, browse to game.curl, to run the game. This will load and run a relatively small Curl Applet (about 440K of uncompressed source code), which will be cached locally, and only downloaded again when an update is available. The applet is the client for the game, and it will allow you to connect to the official Puerto Rico Server, and play an online version of the Puerto Rico board game against other human and computer players. It will also allow you to play a private game on your own computer, against computer players, or even against other human players, using hotseat play. Note that the computer players are not very smart, but they can help you learn how to play the game before you face other human players. You will also be able to view a somewhat useful help file.
If you see an error mentioning a "curl-license" file, and reloading the game.curl applet does not seem to help, then shut down the Curl RTE and reload. There seems to be something flaky about my webserver. If you get other errors, try clearing your internet cache (there is a bug in WinInet involving a very full cache).
As a long-time employee of Curl, Inc, I can vouch that the Curl RTE is a non-malicious plug-in. As the primary author and previous maintainer of the open source game Angband, I have some claim that my vouching is worth something.
Contact Ben Harrison with comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc, and put "Puerto Rico" in the subject to avoid my spam filters.
