Bao la Kiswahili

Choose a highlighted pit, then a sowing or capture choice. The numbers are the exact seed counts. On phones the board turns upright: South owns the left two columns, North the right two. On wider screens North has the upper two rows and South the lower two.

Keyboard: Tab to the board, use arrows to move between pits, and Enter or Space to select. Tab to a sowing choice and activate it. Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes your last turn. All controls also work by tap or click.

In namua, each turn adds one seed from hand. After both hands run out, mtaji begins. Captures are compulsory when available; captured seeds are sown back into your own pits. Win by emptying the other front row or leaving the other player without a legal move.

The square pit is the nyumba; a short bar marks a house still owned. A marked T is a one-turn takasia restriction. House choices appear only when they change the move. This is the full game, including these rules.

Pause, Skip and Replay control sowing playback; Pace changes its speed. Reduced motion shows the result directly. Undo restores a full turn against the computer, or one move in two-player mode. This browser saves the current position; undo and replay history last for the session.

Highlighted pits have legal moves. Selecting one previews a facing capture where applicable. Gentle, Steady and Deep use progressively larger local search budgets; they are not player ratings. The computer runs on your device.

Rules follow the takasia baseline used by the Bao game you linked. An exact relay cycle or the bounded relay safety limit pauses the game without declaring a winner; Undo or New game remains available. Very long sowing sequences use a shorter visual playback without changing the result.

Rules engine adapted from cultivationdata.net, under the MIT licence. Board artwork, interface and opponent are made for this site.