Mancala games

If you're looking for a captivating board game experience for two players, the mancala family offers a diverse range of strategic delights. These games, rooted in ancient traditions, involve small stones, beans, or seeds and a series of pits or holes arranged on a board. The objective is typically to capture more of your opponent's pieces than they capture of yours. Popular variations within the mancala family include oware, bao, omweso, and more. This game brings you an engaging implementation of several mancala games, such as kalah, oware, and congkak.

The game setup includes a board with 6 small pits, known as houses, on each side, and a large pit, referred to as an end zone or store, at each end. Your goal is to capture more seeds than your opponent. Let's delve into the specific rules for two popular versions: kalah and oware.

Kalah Rules:

1. Starting Setup: At the beginning of the game, place four (or five to six) seeds in each house.
2. Control and Scoring: Each player controls the six houses and their seeds on their side of the board. Your score is determined by the number of seeds in the store to your right.
3. Sowing Seeds: On your turn, remove all seeds from one of your houses. Moving counter-clockwise, drop one seed in each house, including your own store but not your opponent's.
4. Capturing: If the last sown seed lands in your empty house, and the opposite house contains seeds, you capture both the last seed and the seeds from the opposite house, placing them in your store.
5. Additional Moves: If the last sown seed lands in your store, you earn an extra move. There's no limit to the number of moves you can make in a single turn.
6. Game End: The game concludes when one player no longer has seeds in any of their houses. The other player then moves all remaining seeds to their store, and the player with the most seeds in their store wins.

Oware Rules:

1. Starting Setup: Begin with four (or five or six) seeds in each house. Each player controls the six houses on their side, and their score is based on the seeds in the store to their right.
2. Sowing: On your turn, take all seeds from one of your houses and distribute them counter-clockwise, one seed per house, excluding the end scoring houses and the house from which you took the seeds. If a house contains 12 or more seeds, it is skipped, and the twelfth seed is placed in the next house.
3. Capturing: Capture occurs when you bring an opponent's house to exactly two or three seeds with your last sown seed. These seeds, along with any previous houses brought to two or three seeds during the same turn, are captured and placed in your scoring house.
4. Forced Moves: If your opponent's houses are empty, you must make a move that gives them seeds. If no such move is possible, capture all seeds in your territory, ending the game.
5. Game End: The game ends when one player captures more than half of the seeds, or when both players have taken half (resulting in a draw).

What's New in the Latest Version 1.4.1

Last updated on Aug 6, 2024 - This version includes important bug fixes to enhance your gaming experience.

Mancala games Screenshots