Quahuru

Quahuru is an original strategy game played on a six-spoked wheel with two dice.

Twelve pieces enter through the centre of the board and race outward to six numbered goals on the rim. Get a piece onto its goal and roll that goal's number, and it is banked. Bank all twelve before your opponent does and you win — and the more pieces they have left, the bigger your score.

Land on a lone enemy piece and you send it all the way back to the centre, where its owner must bring it in again before doing anything else. Put two of your own pieces on a tile and it becomes a wall: nothing of your opponent's may enter it or pass through it. Six goals, and every road to them can be closed.

So each roll is a question. Take the tempting capture and leave your piece exposed? Spend both dice breaking a wall, knowing it hands your opponent a free piece? Race for the goal, or shut the door on theirs? Good rolls open lines. Good play decides which lines exist.

AN OPPONENT WORTH PLAYING

The computer opponent is a neural network, trained on its own self-play games. It learned this board from scratch, and it will punish loose play.

It also runs entirely on your device. There is no server, nothing to sign in to, and no connection required after the first load. Play on a plane, on the underground, or with the network off — the opponent is just as strong.

If you want an easier game, a difficulty slider weakens it without making it play foolishly.

FEATURES

• An original board and ruleset
• A neural-network opponent that runs offline on your device
• Adjustable difficulty
• Two players on one device
• Matches over several games, scored on total margin, or a race to a target score
• An interactive tutorial that walks you through a full game
• Nine visual themes, including a high-contrast colour-blind-safe palette
• Portrait and landscape, with pinch-to-zoom and drag-to-pan
• No advertising, no accounts, no analytics, no data collection of any kind

HOW A TURN GOES

Roll two dice. Move one piece with each, or one piece with both. Pieces take the shortest route to the tile you choose. Numbered pieces can only be banked at their matching goal; blank pieces at any goal. Once every piece you have left is on a goal it can use, the endgame rules relax and blanks can be banked with a higher roll.

There are quieter tactics too: peel a single piece off an enemy wall to break it — at the cost of both your dice and a free piece for them. Or hold a goal your opponent needs, and make them find another way round.

PRIVACY

Quahuru collects nothing. No accounts, no advertising identifiers, no analytics, no crash reporting. Your settings stay on your device. The game works with no network connection at all.