Morabaraba (Mlabalaba) — the classic Southern African strategy game.
One of Africa's oldest and most-loved board games, played for generations across Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana. Learn it in a minute, spend years getting good at it.
PLAY ONLINE
• Get matched with a real opponent, casual or ranked
• Challenge a specific player, or host an open game anyone can join
• Tournaments with a live bracket
• A global leaderboard with ratings and country flags
• Follow players, and see who is online
• Chat rooms, direct messages and post-game discussion
• Everyone plays in one pool, so there is always an opponent to meet
PLAY OFFLINE
• Seven levels of computer opponent, Easy through Master
• Pass-and-play on one device
• Watch two computer players fight it out
• No connection needed — the whole single-player game works offline
TWO RULE SETS
• Traditional (South African) — the 24-point board, mills protected
• Koti (Lesotho) — the 25-point board with the centre point and diagonals, plus the restrictive rules: you must form a mill when you can, you must block one when you can, a blocked player passes instead of losing, and no cow is safe inside a mill
Or set the four rules yourself and play your house variant.
THINGS TO COME BACK FOR
• A new puzzle every day
• Daily quests and a weekly challenge
• Experience, levels, and three journeys across Southern Africa
• Achievements to collect
MADE TO BE PLAYED
• Move hints, threat warnings and confirm-before-you-move, all optional
• Colour-blind mode that tells the herds apart by shape, not only colour
• Seven sound themes, or none at all
• Two piece sets: River Stones and Carved Bulls
• Full statistics, and a replay of any finished game you can step through, scrub and share
HOW TO PLAY
Placing: take turns putting your twelve cows on the board, trying to line three up.
Moving: once every cow is placed, slide one to a neighbouring point each turn.
Flying: down to three cows, you can jump to any empty point.
A mill is three of your cows in a line. Make one and you take one of theirs. Reduce your opponent to two cows, or leave them with nowhere to move, and you have won.
MORE THAN A GAME
Morabaraba is played on scratched boards and bottle tops across the region, and the vocabulary is part of it: your pieces are cows, a mill sends one of your opponent's to the kraal. The game carries its own history, and so does this app.
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