Ghana Ludo

Ludo the way it is played in Ghana: you can also knock somebody out backwards, sideways, and inside their own house. Play alone against bots, or with friends on their own phones.

Then add bots, add a second player on this phone, or invite friends. A friend joins from their own phone by scanning a QR code or opening a link.

Got an invite as text?

The rules

Everybody has four pieces in a corner yard. Roll a six to bring one out onto your start field, then walk it once round the board, into your own house, and onto the black star in the middle with the exact number. A six always gives you another roll. You may jump over anybody, but you can never land on your own piece. The round goes on until only one player is left on the board: that one is last.

Four ways to knock somebody out

Front kick
The ordinary one: land exactly on an opponent going forwards and they go back to their yard.
Back kick
If an opponent stands exactly the rolled number behind you, you may move backwards onto them instead. Your piece carries on forwards from there, so stepping back past your own start field costs you the long way round.
Side kick
After a move, a piece that faces an opponent across a house may jump across and knock them out, but only while the house field between is empty. It is always your choice. You may even step back onto an empty field to line one up, but then you must take it.
Home kick
With the exact number you may walk into an opponent's house and knock out a piece standing there. Your piece walks back out the way it came on a later turn, with any number.

The switches

Whoever opens the table can switch off each special kick, the three rolls you get while nothing of yours is out, piling up to four of your own pieces on your start field, and the safe start field (nobody can be knocked off their own start field).

How online play works, with no server

The phones talk to each other directly, over WebRTC, the same browser technology video calls use. Before they can, each phone must hand the other a short description of how to reach it. There is no server here to carry it, so you carry it: the host's invite is a link (or a QR code), and the friend's phone answers with a link of its own. Once the host opens that answer, the two phones are connected and no game message passes through anybody else.

The fastest way at one table: the friend scans the host's QR code with their camera, then the host scans the answer code on the friend's phone. Far apart, send both links through any chat app. Google's public STUN servers tell each phone its own internet address; they see no moves. Some mobile networks block direct connections: then the two phones cannot connect, and joining the same Wi-Fi fixes it.

The host's phone holds the one true board and applies every move, so two phones can never disagree about where a piece stands. If somebody loses the connection, their seat waits: the host sends them a fresh invite and they sit back down where they were.