Pit & Stone

Goal. Gather more stones in your store than your opponent. The board begins with 48 stones. A score of 25 guarantees a majority.

Board orientation. On mobile, your six pits run down the left column and your store is the bottom trough. Your opponent plays the right column and scores into the top trough.

1. Each of the twelve playing pits begins with four stones.
2. On your turn, tap one of your non-empty pits and lift all of its stones.
3. Sow them one at a time into the following pits, moving counter-clockwise.
4. Place a stone in your own store when you pass it, but always skip your opponent's store.
5. Extra turn: if your final stone lands in your own store, you play again.
6. Capture: if your final stone lands in an empty pit on your side, capture that stone together with all stones in the directly opposite pit.
7. The game ends when all six pits on either player's side are empty.
8. The other player moves all remaining stones on their side into their store. The player with the most stones wins.

What are we playing?

Mancala is not one game. It is a large family of sowing games shaped by different communities, languages, rules and histories.

This digital version of Pit & Stone currently uses Kalah. Kalah is a modern 20th-century game influenced by the wider Mancala tradition. It should not be confused with a single ancient or traditional African ruleset.

The broader Mancala family includes many distinct games and traditions, including Oware, Bao, regional Tsoro traditions, Ouril and many others.

Across generations and geographies, people have gathered around boards, pits, seeds, shells and stones. The rules change from place to place, but the social gesture remains familiar: sit across from someone, make a move and stay awhile.

Pit & Stone does not claim to be one traditional African game. It is a House Blend framework for engaging with the much wider world of Mancala and related board-game traditions with curiosity, context and participation.

The digital board begins with Kalah because its rules are accessible and easy to learn. The larger project creates room to encounter additional regional games, histories and forms of play over time.

A wider family

There is no universal Mancala ruleset. Different traditions developed their own board structures, strategies, terminology and social customs.

From screen to table

Pit & Stone is designed to leave the screen.

In physical spaces, The House Blend turns the game into a hosted cultural table where strangers, friends and communities can gather around play. Music, conversation, design and cultural interpretation can become part of the experience without making the game feel like a lecture.

Why a game table?

Games create a different kind of room. They give strangers something to do before they know what to say. They slow people down, create low-stakes competition and turn an audience into participants.

That is the purpose of Pit & Stone. Not simply to preserve an object behind glass, and not simply to make another digital game, but to use play as cultural infrastructure.

Play better

Move History