Ochre Path Draws

GS74

About this app

Ochre Path Draws is a quiet offline board game built on Fanoron-Tsivy, the Malagasy game played on a woven mat. Nothing here is taken by landing on it. You take by stepping toward a line of enemy stones, or by stepping away from one, and either way the whole run comes off the board.

THE MAT
Forty-five intersections, nine across and five down, drawn with the full diagonal lattice. Every point carries the four straight lines. Where the diagonals of the weave also meet, the point is strong and carries eight lines instead. Strong points wear a diamond stud and weak points a plain dot, so you can always read where a stone is allowed to go. Twenty-two bone stones face twenty-two charcoal stones in the standard opening, with the centre point left empty.

TWO WAYS TO TAKE
Slide one stone one intersection along a line, into an empty point.
- Step toward: if the very next point beyond where you land holds an enemy stone, that stone and every enemy stone standing behind it in the same straight line are lifted.
- Step away: if instead the point directly behind where you started holds an enemy stone, that stone and the run behind it are lifted.
When both lines are open at once you choose which one to take. The board rings each option in its own colour so you can compare the two before you commit. Capturing is compulsory: while any capture exists on the mat, a plain slide is not offered to you at all.

CHAINS
After a capture the same stone may carry on taking, step after step. Two limits hold the chain in check: it may never move twice in the same direction during one turn, and it may never return to an intersection it has already stood on. Spent directions are crossed out on the board as you go, and you may stop the chain whenever you like.

THREE OPPONENTS
Learner plays any legal slide it finds. Weaver looks a turn ahead at material, room to move and the hold on the centre. Elder searches two turns deep and expects your best answer. You also choose who lays the first stone, so you can practise from either side.

FIVE TABS
Play the mat, read your record on Stats, set the opponent and the opener on Levels, work through the illustrated explainer on How, and collect fifteen woven marks on Awards. Wins, longest capture chain, stones taken per mat, how you take them and every mark you earn are all kept between sessions.

DRAWN, NOT PHOTOGRAPHED
The mat, the lattice, the stones and the sweep of a captured line are all drawn as vector graphics on the fly, so the board stays crisp on any screen and the whole app stays small.

COMPLETELY OFFLINE AND SILENT
No internet connection is needed or used at any point. No ads. No analytics. No accounts, no sign-in, no data leaves your device. No sound at all: the game speaks entirely in colour, line and movement, with optional haptic taps when a line lifts off the mat. Play it on a plane, on the underground, or anywhere else with no signal.

A single well-read turn can change the whole mat. Learn to see both lines.