Slate Cairn Roads

Fone Care

About this app

A quiet tabletop game of stones, stacks and roads.

Slate Cairn Roads is an abstract strategy board game for one player against a thinking opponent. You each hold twenty-one flat stones and a single capstone. The board is five squares by five. The goal sounds simple and never quite is: build an unbroken road of your own flats from the left edge to the right, or from the top edge to the bottom.

HOW A TURN WORKS

On your turn you do exactly one thing. Either you place a single new piece from your reserve on an empty square, or you lift a stack you control and carry it.

There are three ways to put a piece down. A flat lies down and carries road. A wall stands on edge: it carries no road at all, and nothing can be stacked on top of it. The capstone carries road and is the only piece in the game that can knock a standing wall flat.

Carrying is where the game opens up. Lift up to five pieces from the top of any stack whose top piece is yours, walk them in one straight line, and leave at least one piece on every square you cross. The piece that started on top finishes on top. A single carry can extend your own road, bury an opponent stone, and reopen a blocked square all at once.

TWO WAYS TO WIN

Link two opposite edges with your flats and your capstone and the road is yours. If nobody manages it and the board fills up, or a player runs out of pieces, count the visible flat tops instead. The larger count wins. An equal count is a level cairn: a draw.

THREE OPPONENTS

Apprentice plays a sensible-looking stone at random and is a gentle place to learn the shapes. Mason looks one move ahead and follows the shortest road it can find. Cairnwright searches two moves deep and will drop a wall in front of your line before you finish it. Choose who lays the opening stone as well: you, the opponent, or alternate every board.

WHAT IS IN THE APP

Play - the board itself, with a piece picker, a carry selector and highlighted landing squares so every legal move is visible before you commit.
Stats - a ledger of games, wins, roads built, average turns, fastest win, stones carried and walls flattened.
Levels - opponent strength, who opens, and a touch feedback switch.
How to Play - the whole rule set, illustrated with small hand-drawn board diagrams.
Awards - twelve milestones to work through, from your first finished board to fifteen wins.

MADE TO BE LEFT ALONE

The whole game runs on your device. There is no internet connection of any kind, no advertising, no analytics, no accounts, no sign-in and no in-app purchases. There is no sound: feedback is entirely visual, with an optional short buzz when a stone lands, which you can switch off. Your ledger and milestones are stored locally and survive closing the app.

The look is deliberately plain: kraft linen, quarried slate and one ochre accent, with pieces drawn as embossed slabs rather than photographs. It reads well in bright light and asks nothing of your battery.

Set out a board, place a stone, and see how far the road goes.