Puluc 3D

An ancient Maya game of luck and strategy, reborn. Challenge the computer or a friend online, and climb to the sacred rank of Ajaw.
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Puluc is a game inspired by the Maya: a race-and-capture game of warriors, prisoners and rescue, may have been played for generations in the highlands of Guatemala and southern Belize.

Two camps face each other across a stone road cut through the jungle. Five warriors to a side. Every turn is staked on a throw of four corn kernels.

And here is the twist that makes it more than a race: taking a warrior prisoner is not the same as defeating him. Prisoners travel with their captor, stacked beneath him, and only by dragging them all the way home do you remove them from the game for good. So every prisoner you take is also a liability — you have to walk him back down the road, within reach of the enemy, to make the capture count.

Your own captured warriors can be rescued the same way. Take the stack that holds them and they are freed and sent home.

A GAME THE MAYA STILL PLAY

Puluc — also called bul or buul — is a game of the Maya peoples of Belize and the Guatemalan highlands. The American ethnologist Stewart Culin described it in 1907, and it is still played today by Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya communities. In the Maya languages the name bul means simply "to play with dice".

Its deeper past is genuinely uncertain. Scholars debate whether it reaches back to the pre-Columbian Maya or took shape in the centuries after the Spanish conquest — no board has ever been found in the archaeological record. What is certain is that it was played across the Maya lowlands with these same four corn kernels, and that in some communities it carried the weight of ritual, played during the vigil before the maize sowing to strengthen the seed.

This is not a museum piece. It is a game people still sit down and play.

Boards vary from village to village — seven, nine or eleven spaces, always an odd number. This edition uses eleven.

HOW IT PLAYS

Throw the four kernels. Each is marked on one side; the number that land marked is how far you move. If none land marked, you move five. Zero becomes five — that is the old rule, not a mistake.

Send a warrior up the road. Land on an enemy and you capture him, taking command of his entire stack: him, and everyone he was already carrying.

Run a captive stack off the far end of the road and the reckoning comes due. Your own warriors who were taken are freed and go home. Your enemy's prisoners are eliminated for good.

Eliminate all five of your opponent's warriors and the match is yours.

WHAT MAKES IT WORTH PLAYING

Rolled movement, real decisions. The corn decides your distance; you decide who moves, which way, and whether it is worth walking prisoners back through ground where they can be taken off you.

Stacking cuts both ways. Prisoners ride beneath their captor and the whole stack moves as one — so a triumphant capture can become a catastrophic loss if the wrong side reaches it.

Nothing is permanent until it is delivered. A lost position can be reversed by capturing the right stack, which keeps matches alive to the last throw.

Short, sharp games. Finish one in a sitting; take a turn while you wait for something else.

BUILT FOR THE PHONE

• One board is the whole game — no menus, no lobbies, no screens to tap through.
• One-handed portrait play: pick a warrior up, drag him, let go.
• Your opponent is the computer, and it plays to win.
• An in-game rules reference whenever you need it.
• Turn indicator and roll value on screen while you play.
• Looping theme music with a one-tap sound toggle.
• Plays entirely offline.

FREE AND QUIET

No ads. No in-app purchases. No accounts, no sign-in. Nothing is collected and nothing leaves your device.

One throw of the corn can turn a match. See if you can run the road.