Sow seeds the classic way, but one pit per side stays hidden until a capture finally exposes it.
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How to play
Kalah-style mancala — lift the seeds from one of your pits and sow them one at a time around the board — with one important difference: each side has a hidden pit whose count the other player cannot see. So the usual perfect-information counting game becomes a game of inference.
Seeds are sown counter-clockwise, one per pit, into your own store but never your opponent's.
You can always see your own hidden pit. You can never see theirs.
The opponent plays honestly against a belief about your hidden pit rather than the true number.
That belief is built from what it has observed, and it narrows as the game reveals information.
When a hidden pit becomes public, the belief snaps to the truth.
Controls
Desktop: click a pit to sow its seeds
Phone & tablet: tap a pit
Game modes
Versus CPU on Easy, Normal or Hard
Two-player hotseat with a pass-device curtain
Online: invite, join by code, or quick match
Tips & strategy
Track their hidden pit yourself. Every sowing that passes it tells you it went up by one, so the count is deducible even though it is not visible.
Your hidden pit is a weapon as well as a secret. An opponent reasoning from a belief can be led into a move that would be obviously bad if they could see the real number.
Avoid emptying your hidden pit needlessly. Once it is public you have given away the only information asymmetry you had.
Play the standard mancala fundamentals underneath — landing your last seed in your store to take another turn matters exactly as much here.
Late in the game the hidden pit matters least, because by then both sides have watched enough seeds pass to have narrowed it.
Origins
Lifting the seeds from a pit and sowing them one at a time is mancala, and the specific two-row, two-store form is Kalah, patented and sold in the United States by William Julius Champion, Jr. in the 1950s.
The original change is one hidden pit per side, whose count the other player cannot see.
Kalah is a solved game precisely because everything is countable — with perfect play the first player wins. Concealing a single pit removes that guarantee and replaces counting with inference, which turns a game of arithmetic into a game about what your opponent's last sow implies.
About Mancala Heist
Mancala Heist is an original free browser take on the ancient mancala sowing game, adding hidden pits for fresh deduction. No download required.
A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.
