About Awalé
Awalé, also known as Oware or Ayò, is one of the oldest strategy games in the world and is still played across West Africa, including in Côte d'Ivoire. The board has two rows of six pits with four seeds in each. On your turn you lift all the seeds from one of your pits and sow them one by one counter-clockwise. If your last seed lands in an opponent's pit and makes a total of two or three, you capture them, along with any two-or-three pits right before it.
This version follows the widely played Abapa rules, including the rule that you must give your opponent seeds when they have none, and it explains every capture as it happens. Choose an easy, normal or hard computer opponent, which looks several moves ahead on the hardest setting, or play a friend on the same device. The first player to collect more than half of the 48 seeds wins.
How to play
Tap or click one of your pits on the bottom row to sow its seeds, or press the number keys 1 to 6 to pick a pit from left to right. Open the rules from the menu at any time.
Tips
- Pits with many seeds can travel all the way round the board; count before you sow.
- Leaving your opponent's pits on one or two seeds invites a capture next turn.
- Keeping a big pit in reserve gives you a powerful move late in the game.
