High King
The invading hordes have reached the throne room! Crush the tyrannical monarch or escort your king to safety in this variant of the ancient Norse game Hnefatafl. This game is my winning entry in the 2006 Game Gardens Challenge. Go and play right now!
Though the game was written only in the span of three very hectic weeks I am quite pleased with the final product. Not that I can present an unbiased view, but the dynamics of the game are fascinating. It is almost as if the white and black players are playing two entirely different games because their goals and positions are so thoroughly different.
The actual implementation is, in contrast, rather uninteresting. Written purely in Java 5 it sits on top of the beautifully elegant Narya and Nenya libraries inside the overall Game Gardens framework. Grab the source code, available under the MIT license.