Introduction
Mancala is a classic board game played for thousands of years across the world. Played with 48 beads, your goal is to collect as many of these beads as possible for yourself. The player who collects the most beads wins the game.
Game Play
To play Mancala, simply touch the game board anywhere that isn’t a bowl. A menu will appear on your screen, from which you can choose PLAY to join the game as long as there are not already 2 players playing.
The game begins automatically as soon as the first player makes a move. Players may quit and be replaced during the game if desired.
The current turn is indicated by the glowing home bowls (the large bowls on each side).
On your turn, simply touch a bowl of beads on your side of the board to make a move. You cannot play from an empty bowl, nor can you play from one of your opponent’s bowls. Your side of the board is the side with the arrow pointing TOWARD your home bowl.
When you play from a bowl of beads, that bowl is emptied and the beads that were in it are deposited 1 at a time in each subsequent bowl around the board, moving in a clockwise direction. Beads are deposited in your own home bowl, but not those of your opponent (your opponent’s home bowl is skipped). The game will handle this for you automatically.
If the last bead from a bowl is deposited into your home bowl, then you get another turn! If it ends on any other bowl, then the turn passes to your opponent. This is important strategy for winning the game. Well executed plays during the game can result in having multiple bowls with the correct number of beads in them to play all of them on the same turn.
If the last bead from a bowl lands in an empty bowl on your side of the board, you get to collect that bead immediately and deposit it into your home bowl to increase your score. As a bonus, you also collect any beads from the adjacent bowl on your opponent’s side of the board. The game will handle this for you automatically if your last bead lands in a qualifying empty bowl.
The game is over when one player successfully empties all of the bowls on their side of the board, and the player with the highest number of beads in their home bowl wins the game!
When one player successfully empties their row of all beads, any beads remaining in their opponent’s row get collected into their opponent’s home bowl and added to their score.
Settings
Mancala board owners can touch the Mancala game and choose “Settings” from the menu to change options on the game. The following options are available:
- Timeout On: Enable game timeout. Game will automatically reset after an hour of no moves being made.
- Timeout Off: Disable timeout option.
- Quiet On: Disable some of the game’s local chat output so it is less spammy.
- Quiet Off: Allow all local chat from the game.
- Names On: Show names of active players as floating text above their own score bowls while a game is in progress.
- Names Off: Do not show player names as floating text.
- Counts On: Show the number of beads in each bowl as floating text while a game is in progress.
- Counts Off: Do not show number of beads in each bowl as floating text.
- Scale: Resize the game board from 0.5m to 2.8m in size. WARNING: Like all mesh objects, the land impact of the game will increase as it gets bigger, and decrease as it gets smaller!
- Colors: Change the colors of the game board.
- Update: Check for newer versions of Mancala.
Bug Fixes and Upgrades
Most owners of K.R. Engineering games are entitled to free upgrades to newer versions of the game. Simply touch the game board and click “Settings,” then “Update” to check for new updates.
If you are having problems with your game, please search this knowledge base or contact us for product support. If the problem you are having has not previously been encountered, a new game version will be released with a fix as soon as possible, and you may qualify for a bug bounty.
DISCLAIMER: The appearance and feature set of games are subject to revision between versions as the capabilities of Second Life change over time. Please see the detailed ChangeLog for your particular game before upgrading. By upgrading. you are agreeing to accept any and all changes that have been imposed on the updated version of the game.
Additional Questions
If you have more questions, please use the search tool on our main page to browse our many helpful articles and FAQ entries. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for, you can contact us for assistance.
ChangeLog
You can find the ChangeLog for Mancala by visiting this article.