Mancala

Pick up the seeds from a pit and sow them one by one; whoever banks more in their own store wins. Use extra turns and captures well to beat the computer.

Tap a pit on your side to sow.

How to play

Tap a pit on your side (the bottom row) to pick up all its seeds and drop them one by one, left to right. A seed goes into your store at the right end too, and then on around to your opponent’s side, but never into their store. If your last seed lands in your own store, you move again. If your last seed lands in an empty pit on your side and the pit opposite has seeds, you capture those seeds plus your last one into your store. The game ends when either side has no seeds in its pits; the remaining seeds go to the store of the side they sit on, and whoever has more wins. "Hint" and "Auto-play" are available too.

Learn more

These are the widely played rules: six pits per side, four seeds in each. Seeds are sown counter-clockwise. There are only six choices per move, but extra turns can chain several moves into one turn, which changes the position a lot. At "Strong", the computer scores positions by the difference between the stores plus the seeds left on each side, and searches ahead for as long as its time budget allows. "Normal" looks four moves ahead; "Easy" picks a non-empty pit at random. The total number of seeds is always 48.

Read more about it: Two-player games get “solved” →