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A modern award-winning abstract of pure strategy — no dice, no cards, no luck, and famously no draws. Two armies of identical pawns line up on an 8×8 board, yours at the bottom marching up and the AI's at the top marching down. Pawns inch forward one square at a time and capture only on the diagonal, so the whole game is a tense push-and-shove for tempo: every pawn you send forward is a spearhead and a weakness at once, because the square it leaves behind can be the gap an enemy slips through. The first side to land a single pawn on the far home row wins outright. Stack up wins in a row and the AI thinks deeper with every victory, so your streak is a real measure of how far your strategy can carry you.
You play the bottom army; the AI plays the top. You move first. Tap one of your pawns and the squares it can move to light up; tap a highlighted square to move there. A diagonal target ringed in green is a capture.
A pawn has exactly three possible steps, all forward (for you, upward): one square straight ahead, or one square diagonally to either side. The straight step is only allowed into an EMPTY square — you can never push into or capture the pawn directly in front of you. A diagonal step may go to an empty square, or onto an enemy pawn, which captures and removes it. Pawns never move sideways or backward, and there is no double first move.
You win the instant any one of your pawns reaches the top row — the AI's home row. The AI wins if one of its pawns reaches your bottom row. You also win if the AI runs out of pawns or has no legal move, and you lose in the mirror cases. Because someone always makes progress, the game can never end in a draw.
Win a game and the next one begins immediately, keeping your streak alive — your score is how many games you have won in a row. The AI searches one step deeper as your streak climbs, so it grows sharper the longer you last. A single loss ends the run; tap Save to send your streak to the Hall of Fame.
Defend in pairs, not alone. A lone pawn guarding a square can be traded off and the door swings open; but two of your pawns covering the same square are a wall, because if an enemy captures into it, you recapture and still hold the point. Whenever you push forward, ask whether the squares behind your advance are still defended twice. Most losses come from a single weak file the opponent quietly aims a column at.
Forward is also fragile. Every pawn you advance stops defending the squares behind it, so a reckless charge up one side often just hands the enemy a clean diagonal lane on the other. Think of advancing as spending defence: do it where you have a local majority and the support to back it up, not as a lone sprinter the AI can simply step around.
Count the race before you commit. Because there are no draws, many games come down to a pure tempo count — if both sides have a running pawn, the one who needs fewer moves to reach home wins, and capturing a runner costs a move too. Before you start a breakthrough, count your moves to their back row against their fastest reply. If you are a tempo ahead, race; if you are behind, stay home and defend until the count flips.
Columns of three are the classic wall. A solid way to hold a side is to keep pawns stacked so every square on your frontier is guarded by two diagonals. Trades that thin your wall to single defenders are exactly what the AI is hunting, so be reluctant to capture toward your own weak edge just because you can. Patience wins streaks here far more than aggression.