Fox And Geese

A board from the 14th century, an opponent that thinks before it moves, and nothing else: no ads, no accounts, no network, nothing collected.

One fox. Thirteen geese. A cross of thirty-three points.

Fox and Geese is one of the oldest recorded board games in northern Europe, played here in its original form — thirteen geese with free movement, a board with diagonals, and a fox that hunts.

The geese try to hem the fox in until it cannot move at all. The fox picks them off one by one, jumping a goose to the empty point beyond, chaining jumps when the flock leaves a gap. If the flock drops below six geese, the trap can never close and the fox has won. It is a simple game to learn and a hard one to play well.

• Play either side, or watch the computer play itself • Three strengths, and a goose count from nine to thirteen — fewer geese make the flock's task much harder • Step back through a finished game move by move to see where it turned • Full VoiceOver support: every square, piece and move is spoken, and the board can be played without seeing it • Dynamic Type, increased contrast and reduced transparency all respected • English and German

THE OPPONENT

The computer opponent is a search engine. It looks ahead several moves for both sides, scores the positions it reaches by how boxed in the fox is and how well the flock holds together, and plays the move that comes out best — millions of positions for a single move, entirely on your device.

At its strongest the geese are genuinely hard to beat. That is the game rather than a flaw in it: with good play the flock holds the advantage, and the fox lives off mistakes.

NOTHING LEAVES YOUR DEVICE

No accounts. No advertising. No analytics. No tracking. No network access at all — the game works exactly the same in aeroplane mode. Your game in progress is saved on your device and nowhere else.

A GAME WITH A HISTORY

Documented as early as the 14th century in Scandinavia and the British Isles, Fox and Geese spread across Europe in many shapes. Later variants added more geese — fifteen or seventeen — and took away the geese's backward and diagonal moves to compensate. Neither adjustment quite balanced it, and no one variant ever became standard. The rules here are the oldest documented form.