Mancala (California Dreams) Details - LaunchBox Games Database

Overview

Mancala is a family of boards games where the aim is to capture seeds that are placed in a number of bowls. This particular game is based on Oware (or Wari as it is called in the manual) a variant that originates from western Africa. The game can be played by one player against an AI or against another human player. Both players have six bowls and when starting out there are four seeds in each bowl. The two players then has to sow their seeds and they take turns doing so. Sowing means that the player takes all the seeds from one bowl and places them in each bowl counter-clockwise from the bowl that is being emptied. The aim of the game is to capture seeds and this happens automatically when the last placed seed in a turn leads to a bowl on the opponent's side of the board having two or three seeds. The player making the move will then capture all seeds in that bowl. If the previous bowl also has two or three seeds these too are captured until a bowl that doesn't contain two or three seeds is reached. The winner of the game is the player that captures the most seeds. Since there are 48 seeds in total capturing 25 seeds is enough to win.