Welcome to PlayAwale.com! I invite you to (re)discover the ancient game of Awalé through this online version.
Independent project
I work alone on PlayAwale, driven by passion, to keep improving it and keep it 100% ad‑free.
If you'd like to give a small boost, a donation of 3 € helps keep the project alive.
Make a donation - 3€ One‑time support – no commitment
PlayAwale.com is a digital adaptation of the legendary African game Awalé, an ancient strategy game that tests your thinking, your observation skills and your ability to anticipate.
The game known as Awalé is played throughout West Africa and beyond, and has different names depending on the region and traditions: Oware in Ghana, Ayo in Nigeria, Wari in Haiti or Benin, Awari in the Caribbean, and many others. It belongs to the large family of so‑called Mancala games, a generic term of Arabic origin meaning “to move”, which groups many traditional variants around the world.
The rules can vary slightly from one country to another (number of seeds, capture conditions, end of game…). On PlayAwale.com, I modestly relied on the Ivorian rules, which I find particularly clear and balanced. This choice simply aims to offer a coherent and accessible base, while trying to respect the spirit of the game as it is traditionally played.
Dive into a Player vs virtual opponent mode, carefully designed to offer multiple difficulty levels. The goal: to offer a progressive experience, accessible to beginners as well as to those who want a bit more thinking.
Note: these opponents don’t all play the same way. Some styles may feel easier (or harder) than a “previous” level — it depends on your level, habits and strategies. Starting from Ancestral Spirit, the levels begin to include more predictions and anticipation, making it harder to judge difficulty “on paper”.
🧪 In progress: I started working on an AI that learns over time from games, to become stronger. The idea is to save games and classify them to extract “lessons” (a field often called reinforcement learning). The best of you — those who challenge the hard levels and win — will directly help improve this future level. It will probably be a next level… but it takes a lot of time to do properly.
🤝 2‑player modes
PlayAwale.com also offers 2‑player games to play together, in two simple ways:
👨👩👧👦 A game for all ages… and all places!
Whether you’re a curious toddler, an adult who loves challenges, or a senior attached to tradition, PlayAwale.com invites you to rediscover Awalé: a game that is simple to learn, strategic, universal and formidable to master.
Awalé can be played anywhere: online on the internet, in the sand with small holes, on an egg carton with shells or pebbles, or even on a carved wooden board. All you need is seeds and imagination to create a game, anywhere in the world.
An ancient, intergenerational… and timeless game. 🌍
Sow, harvest, capture... and become a master of Awalé! 🌱♟️
💡 Play now on PlayAwale.com and face a virtual opponent, improving with each game! 🚀
💛 PlayAwale is an independent project developed out of passion.
A support of 3 € helps keep it alive. Thank you 🙂
Name: Nicolas Lion
Email: contact@nlion.fr
Phone: 06 95 38 15 89Website: www.nlion.fr
Host: O2switch
SIRET: 510 909 807 00032
Address: Chemin des Pardiaux, 63000 Clermont-Ferrand
Phone: 04 44 44 60 40
Website: www.o2switch.fr
All elements of the site (texts, images, videos, music, source code, etc.) are protected by French and international intellectual property laws. Any reproduction, representation, modification or adaptation, in whole or in part, without prior written authorization, is strictly prohibited.
This site does not collect personal data for commercial purposes. No personal information is sold or shared with third parties.
This site does not use any third‑party statistics service (such as Google Analytics). All traffic data is processed using an in‑house application, without resorting to external tools. No information is transmitted to external services or platforms.
To ensure the proper operation of the online Awalé game, cookies are stored on your device. These cookies are strictly necessary and allow saving your results (games won, lost) as well as your game history. Without these cookies, it would not be possible to retrieve your results during future visits.
In order to improve the game, some played games may also be saved anonymously (without information that can identify you), with the goal of being used in the future to create and strengthen difficulty levels.
We collect, in a fully anonymous way, some information such as your country of origin and your results. This data is only used to establish a ranking of players by country. It does not allow identifying you personally and is never sold nor used for commercial purposes.
Development: Nicolas Lion (nlion.fr)
Contributions:
Last updated: 03/01/2026
PlayAwale is a free, ad-free Awalé game, an independent project developed and maintained by Nicolas Lion.
If you enjoy it and would like to support the project, a small donation of 3 € simply helps keep it alive and improve it.
👉 No obligation: playing and having fun already counts.
Don’t want to donate?
There are other ways to help PlayAwale:
Other options:
(These links indirectly support the project.)
Do you have a web project (website, app, WordPress)
and want to work together?
👉 nlion.fr
Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the game 🙂
Awalé is an ancient strategy game, and the rules applied here seem to be inspired by the Ivorian version. Here are the principles of this captivating game:
Objective: Collect more seeds than your opponent by strategically sowing your seeds and capturing those of your opponent.
Setup: Each hole starts with 4 seeds. The board consists of 12 holes arranged in two rows of 6.
Gameplay:
1. Select one of your holes containing seeds.
2. Pick up all the seeds from that hole.
3. Sow them one by one in the following holes, moving counterclockwise, skipping your starting hole.
Capturing: If the last seed sown lands in an opponent’s hole that now contains 2 or 3 seeds, you capture those seeds.
Starvation Rule: It is forbidden to sow in a way that starves your opponent, meaning leaving them without the possibility to collect seeds. If this happens, you automatically lose the game, unless the total number of seeds on the board is low.
End of the Game:
- The game ends when a player can no longer play or if fewer than 6 seeds remain on the board.
- If a player is blocked and there are more than 6 seeds left, they immediately win the game.
- If 6 or fewer seeds remain, they are given to the active player, and the player with the most collected seeds wins.
To adapt the game for a wide range of players, three difficulty levels are available:
Novice Sower: Ideal for beginners. The computer plays simply, providing a smooth introduction to the game mechanics.
Seed Guardian: A challenge for players looking to improve. The computer adopts a more thoughtful strategy, requiring more anticipation.
Ancient Spirit: Now things get serious! The computer deploys much more complex strategies... To be honest, even I struggle to win. Well, maybe I'm still just a beginner in Awalé! 😉
Have fun and may the best strategist win! 🌱🏆