Pallanguzhi: Mancala Game

Sow seeds, capture pits. The South Indian mancala classic, completely free with no ads. Play the AI or pass the phone to a friend.

Pallanguzhi (பல்லாங்குழி), also spelled Pallankuzhi, is the South Indian mancala game of fourteen pits, beautifully rebuilt for your phone.

Pallanguzhi is a two-player game of sowing and counting, long played in Tamil Nadu and across South India. Lift the seeds from one of your pits, sow them one by one around the board, and capture more seeds than your opponent. There are no dice and no luck: every move is decided by the board and the pit you choose.

FREE, AD-FREE AND OFFLINE • Completely free, with no ads • No account or sign-up. Open the app and play. • Plays fully offline. No internet connection is needed.

PLAY YOUR WAY • Challenge the AI on Easy or Hard • Pass the phone and play a friend or family member on the same device

HOW IT PLAYS • Fourteen pits in two rows of seven, with seven seeds in each pit • Sow counter-clockwise. If the pit after your last seed has seeds, pick them up and keep sowing • If the pit after your last seed is empty, capture the pit beyond it • When a pit reaches exactly four seeds, those seeds go to the pit's owner • Play in rounds. Refill your pits from your captured seeds, and pits you can't fill stay closed. Win when your opponent can't fill a single pit.

MAKE IT YOUR GAME • Claim fours and end-of-turn captures by tap, or have them claimed automatically • Set a round limit for a quicker game, where the player with the most seeds wins

LEARN AS YOU PLAY • An illustrated How to Play guide walks you through every rule • Open the rules at any time during a game

MADE WITH CARE • A carved wooden board, with seeds that pile up in their pits • Gentle haptics as you play, and the screen stays on during a game • Built by One Point Five Pixels, a small studio in Bengaluru

A GAME WITH HISTORY Pallanguzhi's name is traced to the Tamil for "fourteen pits". It belongs to the mancala family of sowing games, found across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In Tamil Nadu it was long a women's pastime, played through the night at festivals such as Sivarathri. It's called Aḷiguḷi (Aliguli) in Kannada and Chennemane in Tulu.

The game exercises memory and counting, and some schools have used it to teach. Now you can share it with your family.