Moves this game
Mulberry Mancala is the classic seed sowing game on a carved wooden board. Lift the seeds from one of your houses, drop them one by one round the board, and gather more into your store than your opponent. Play Kalah, the rules most people learn first, or Oware, the great game from Ghana.
Mancala is not one game but a whole family of them, played across Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Caribbean. The name comes from an Arabic word for moving things. Boards cut into stone and floors date back at least 1,500 years, and there are hundreds of named games, from Oware in Ghana and Bao in East Africa to Congkak in Malaysia and Toguz korgool in Kyrgyzstan.
They all share one idea: sowing . You lift every seed from one pit and drop them one at a time into the pits that follow. Where your last seed lands decides what happens next. We built Mulberry Mancala with two of the best known rule sets, Kalah and Oware, and we made the sowing feel like the real thing: every seed flies, lands with a click, and the count beside each pit ticks up as it does. It's free, it runs in your browser and there's nothing to download.
Kalah is the version most people in North America and Europe learn first, often just called mancala. It was published in the United States in the 1950s, drawing on the African games.
Read the full Mulberry Mancala guide
Yes. It's free to play in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with no ads and nothing to install.
In Kalah you sow into your own store, you go again when your last seed lands there, and you capture by landing in an empty house of yours. In Oware the stores only hold captures, there are no extra turns, and you capture houses on the other side that end up with 2 or 3 seeds.
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