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This game seemed impossibly complicated, but once you got the idea, it was great fun. The idea was that you controlled a team trying to escape from Colditz Castle, the World War 2 German POW camp. It was based on the books and TV series of the same name.The board had a detailed diagram of the castle - multiple rooms, an inner courtyard, and areas outside the castle. You rolled dice, and moved around on game spaces shown by small circles. There were multiple escape teams ? wooden 'men', in different colours to represent different countries ? Britain, America, France, etc, plus black pieces, representing Germans. At the start of the game, you got a certain number of men, depending on how many players were taking part.The game was in 2 parts: first, you decided on an escape plan, and moved through the castle collecting equipment, such as rope, forged documents, wire cutters, etc. You moved your men into rooms marked with the equipment they 'contained', and received cards depicting the equipment. You also received cards on rolling certain numbers, which might let you avoid a search, or some other advantage. The Germans chased the POWs, and got cards allowing them to arrest or search a POW, confiscate equipment, etc.The 2nd part was the actual escape. You moved a man along the shortest route possible, aiming for 'home' represented by red, white and blue circles outside the castle. When you encountered obstacles such as cliffs, wire fences etc., you surrendered the appropriate equipment card. For example, for a cliff you gave a rope card. Hopefully you planned properly while collecting equipment and had enough of the appropriate cards because if not, or if you got caught, you were sent back to captivity.There was also an option to 'Run for Home'. At the start of the game, you got a card which you couldn't look at unless you announced you were going to 'run'. Then you rolled the dice and the card gave you a number; you multiplied it by the score on the dice and that gave you the number of moves you could use to escape. If you reached 'Home', within that number of moves, you were safe. The first person to do this was the winner but if you failed you were dead and your entire team was out of the game. I think the Germans could only win if all the teams were dead.I went through a stage of being addicted to the game. I had read the books and played for hours on my own (it was such a long game that my family rarely wanted to play). I'm not sure now what the fascination was, but I have very happy memories of being totally absorbed in it.
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