Hanji Post Hops

Livewelly

About this app

Three stones rest in a row on warm mulberry paper. Two of them are yours. In almost every jumping game ever printed you would leap over the enemy. Here you leap over your own.

Hanji Post Hops is a quiet abstract board game for one player against a thinking opponent, played on a hand-inked sheet in cream, black and a single vermilion.

THE ONE RULE THAT TURNS EVERYTHING AROUND

A stone may step one square up, down, left or right onto an empty square. To capture, it jumps over an adjacent stone of your own colour and lands on the square immediately beyond, which must hold a rival stone. That rival stone is lifted off the paper. You may never jump over a rival, never land on an empty square with a jump, and never chain two jumps in one turn.

Your own stones are the launch pads. The solid block you build is your strength and, at the same time, the only weapon you own.

WHY TRADING DOWN CAN LOSE YOU THE GAME

Two of your stones side by side make a couple, and a couple is the only thing that can fire a jump. Take everything on offer and your line thins out until no two of your stones touch any more. You can reach the end of a game holding more material than your rival and still have no way on earth to attack. Every capture is also a small act of disarmament, and learning to feel that is the whole art of this game.

You lose if you have no legal move left, and you lose if you are cut down to a single stone, because one lone stone has nothing of its own to jump over.

SEE THE SPRINGBOARD

Tap one of your stones and the board answers you. A small green dot marks a quiet step. A vermilion arc marks a jump, drawn passing right over the friendly stone it uses, with that stone ringed in green so you can see exactly which of your own men is doing the launching. Couple counters sit beside the board for both sides, so you always know how many launchers are left.

WHAT IS INSIDE

- Two boards. Four by four with eight stones a side, sharp and quick. Six by six with twelve a side for a longer, more patient game.
- Three opponents. Easy plays any legal move while you learn. Normal looks a move ahead and takes the best trade it can see. Hard searches several moves deep and hunts for the trade that strips away your last launcher.
- Choose who opens, so you can practise answering a shape you did not choose.
- A record book that survives closing the app: games, wins, streaks, stones taken and lost, and your longest run of turns without breaking a couple.
- Nine seals to earn, every one of them worked out from your own record.
- An illustrated explainer that walks through the step, the jump, the moves that are never legal, and the trap of trading down.

QUIET BY DESIGN

The whole game runs on your device and nothing else. No internet connection is needed or used, no adverts appear anywhere, no accounts, no trackers, no in-app purchases. There is no sound at all, not one note, so it plays just as happily in a waiting room or late at night as it does anywhere else. Feedback is visual, with an optional short buzz you can switch off.

Warm paper, ink, and one red stone. Sit down and take the field.