Mancala games

Mancala games are a classic family of two-player, turn-based strategy board games that have been enjoyed for centuries across various cultures. Played with small stones, beans, or seeds and a board featuring rows of pits, these games emphasize tactical thinking and planning. The primary goal is typically to capture more of your opponent’s pieces than they do yours, making every move a calculated step toward victory. (Source: Wikipedia)

There are numerous variations within the mancala family, including popular versions like Oware, Bao, and Omweso. This implementation brings together several well-known mancala-style games—Kalah, Oware, and Congkak—offering players a rich and diverse gameplay experience.

The game includes a standard board setup with six small pits, known as houses, on each side and a larger pit at each end called a store or end zone. The objective remains consistent across versions: capture more seeds than your opponent to win the game.

Kalah Rules

1. At the start of the game, each house contains four seeds (though some variations use five or six seeds per house).
2. Each player controls the six houses on their side of the board. A player’s score is determined by the number of seeds in their store, located to their right.
3. Players take turns sowing seeds. On a turn, a player picks up all seeds from one of their houses and distributes them one by one into subsequent houses in a counter-clockwise direction. This includes their own store but skips the opponent’s store.
4. If the last seed sown lands in an empty house on the player’s side and the opposite house contains seeds, both the last seed and all seeds from the opposite house are captured and placed into the player’s store.
5. If the last seed lands in the player’s own store, they earn an additional move. There is no limit to how many extra moves a player can achieve in a single turn.
6. The game ends when one player has no seeds left in any of their houses. The other player then moves all remaining seeds on their side to their store. The player with the most seeds in their store is declared the winner.

Oware Rules

1. The game begins with four seeds in each house (some versions use five or six). Each player controls the six houses on their side, and their score is the total seeds captured into their store.
2. On a turn, a player removes all seeds from one of their houses and sows them counter-clockwise, dropping one seed per house. Seeds are not placed into the scoring stores, and the starting house is left empty. If a house contains 12 or more seeds, it is skipped after the twelfth seed is placed in the next house.
3. Captures occur only when the final seed sown brings an opponent’s house to exactly two or three seeds. In this case, those seeds are captured. If the previous house also now contains two or three seeds and belongs to the opponent, it is captured as well—this chain continues until the sequence breaks.
4. If all of the opponent’s houses are empty, the current player must make a move that delivers seeds to the opponent’s side. If no such move is possible, the current player captures all remaining seeds on their own side, ending the game.
5. The game concludes when a player captures more than half of the total seeds, securing victory. If each player ends up with exactly half, the game is a draw.

What's New in Version 1.4.1

Last updated on Aug 6, 2024 – Bug fixes implemented to improve stability and gameplay performance.

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