Mancala games

Discover the engaging world of two-player board games with the mancala family, a collection of strategic games played with small stones, beans, or seeds across rows of pits or holes. These games, deeply rooted in history, offer a variety of gameplay experiences, from oware to bao and omweso. This implementation focuses on three popular variants: kalah, oware, and congkak, each providing a unique challenge on a board featuring 6 small pits, called houses, on each side and a larger pit, known as an end zone or store, at each end. The primary goal across these games is to capture more seeds than your opponent, making it a thrilling contest of strategy and foresight.

Kalah Rules:

1. Setup: Start the game by placing four (or five to six) seeds in each house.
2. Control and Scoring: Each player oversees the six houses and the seeds on their side of the board. Your score is determined by the number of seeds in your right-side store.
3. Gameplay: Players take turns sowing seeds. Choose a house, remove all seeds, and distribute them counter-clockwise, including your own store but skipping your opponent's.
4. Capturing: If your last seed lands in your empty house and the opposite house has seeds, capture both the last seed and the seeds from the opposite house into your store.
5. Additional Moves: Landing the last seed in your store grants an extra turn. There's no limit to the number of moves you can make in a turn.
6. Endgame: The game concludes when one player has no seeds left in 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. Setup: Begin with four (or five or six) seeds in each house. Control the six houses on your side, with your score reflected in the right-side store.
2. Sowing: On your turn, select a house, remove all seeds, and distribute them counter-clockwise, skipping the starting house and the end scoring houses.
3. Capturing: Capture occurs when your final seed in a turn brings an opponent's house to exactly two or three seeds. This captures those seeds, and potentially more if the preceding seed also resulted in two or three seeds in an opponent's house. Captured seeds go to your scoring house.
4. Compulsory Move: If your opponent's houses are empty, you must make a move that gives them seeds. If no such move is possible, you capture all remaining seeds in your territory, ending the game.
5. Game End: The game ends when one player captures more than half the seeds or when both players have taken half the seeds, resulting in a draw.

What's New in the Latest Version 1.4.1

Last updated on Aug 6, 2024 - bugfixes