Very cool -- a fun variation on backgammon, one of my favorite games. I could see myself getting into this. I wasn't quite clear on the numbered stones rule (you have to roll their number to save them?).
Curious how the designer determined the topography of the board as well.
ETA: the wall break move is an interesting option, but I feel walls are slightly less powerful anyway (compared to backgammon) given the low consequences of getting captured (you go to the home tile, which isn't too far away from the saving-zones at the edge of the board).
Walls also do less in terms of blocking stones, since there are so many routes through the board. I wonder though if good players would start preferencing and scrabbling over the lower numbered save zones in order to get better chances in the end game?
Wasn’t clear how to move pieces - it says I need to move a piece from the front of rack to a marked square. Not clear where the front of the rack is and could not select any piece or move any of them so stuck at first step on mobile.
Quahuru is a two-player, dice-based, race-and-blockade game played on a six-spoked wheel. Bring your pieces to goals that they can be saved from, while also using the same pieces to block your opponent en route. Part of the game is developing a sense of tempo for when to leave a piece on the board as part of a block and when to race it to goal and bank it. A good sense for probability is also important. Backgammon players will find this game somewhat familiar (saving, blot exposure, good use of dice), but it's different in a lot of ways -- saving works differently, and pieces aren't all the same.
The computer opponent is a strong neural net. There's a tutorial and hint mode for easy learning. Variance is high per game, so it's built to be played as a match over several games scored on total margin. You can play in the browser or as a free Android app; no ads, no data collected.
This is a hobby project I've been working on for a while, and I'd love to hear what people think of it!
I've been thinking about a physical board but I think that it must be large to accommodate the disks in the small cells close to the center. Furthermore, and more important, how do we spot the numbered disks? They must always be on top or have a different shape. A natural way would be triangle, square, penthagon, etc but then you lose the match with the numbers on the dice. So, triangle is a 3, a line could be a 2, a small square a 1? Or Lego pieces with 1 to 6 pins, or whatever they are called in English (sorry, I even forgot their name in my language.)
The interactive tutorial has a flaw at least on mobile: if I read the text at the bottom I can't look at the board and viceversa and the text keeps changing so I can't read a sentence, look at what happens on the board and understand what the text is about. I gave up at step 1. Solution: stop the text and add a button to move to the next sentence.
Another suggestion: mark the destination box as a target for a move to save a piece. It took me a long time to understand how to save pieces. I eventually asked for a hint. It told me to double tap or drag, but they are never used anywhere else in the game to AFAIK, so they are not natural moves. Everything is done by selecting a piece and tapping one of the highlighted destinations. Saving must highlight the box too especially because single tapping on it works.
Finally, the game feels like a crossover between backgammon and the game on the back of many checker boards, the one with 3 concentric squares. I played only one game while I was figuring out the rules. It feels OK but I should play it more times.
Very cool -- a fun variation on backgammon, one of my favorite games. I could see myself getting into this. I wasn't quite clear on the numbered stones rule (you have to roll their number to save them?).
Curious how the designer determined the topography of the board as well.
ETA: the wall break move is an interesting option, but I feel walls are slightly less powerful anyway (compared to backgammon) given the low consequences of getting captured (you go to the home tile, which isn't too far away from the saving-zones at the edge of the board).
Walls also do less in terms of blocking stones, since there are so many routes through the board. I wonder though if good players would start preferencing and scrabbling over the lower numbered save zones in order to get better chances in the end game?
Wasn’t clear how to move pieces - it says I need to move a piece from the front of rack to a marked square. Not clear where the front of the rack is and could not select any piece or move any of them so stuck at first step on mobile.
Quahuru is a two-player, dice-based, race-and-blockade game played on a six-spoked wheel. Bring your pieces to goals that they can be saved from, while also using the same pieces to block your opponent en route. Part of the game is developing a sense of tempo for when to leave a piece on the board as part of a block and when to race it to goal and bank it. A good sense for probability is also important. Backgammon players will find this game somewhat familiar (saving, blot exposure, good use of dice), but it's different in a lot of ways -- saving works differently, and pieces aren't all the same.
The computer opponent is a strong neural net. There's a tutorial and hint mode for easy learning. Variance is high per game, so it's built to be played as a match over several games scored on total margin. You can play in the browser or as a free Android app; no ads, no data collected.
This is a hobby project I've been working on for a while, and I'd love to hear what people think of it!
Will there be a physical version?
I'm not the author.
I've been thinking about a physical board but I think that it must be large to accommodate the disks in the small cells close to the center. Furthermore, and more important, how do we spot the numbered disks? They must always be on top or have a different shape. A natural way would be triangle, square, penthagon, etc but then you lose the match with the numbers on the dice. So, triangle is a 3, a line could be a 2, a small square a 1? Or Lego pieces with 1 to 6 pins, or whatever they are called in English (sorry, I even forgot their name in my language.)
The interactive tutorial has a flaw at least on mobile: if I read the text at the bottom I can't look at the board and viceversa and the text keeps changing so I can't read a sentence, look at what happens on the board and understand what the text is about. I gave up at step 1. Solution: stop the text and add a button to move to the next sentence.
Another suggestion: mark the destination box as a target for a move to save a piece. It took me a long time to understand how to save pieces. I eventually asked for a hint. It told me to double tap or drag, but they are never used anywhere else in the game to AFAIK, so they are not natural moves. Everything is done by selecting a piece and tapping one of the highlighted destinations. Saving must highlight the box too especially because single tapping on it works.
Finally, the game feels like a crossover between backgammon and the game on the back of many checker boards, the one with 3 concentric squares. I played only one game while I was figuring out the rules. It feels OK but I should play it more times.