Odin's Checkers
Classic checkers — draughts — rebuilt for people who actually play.
One purchase. No ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, nothing dangled behind a paywall. Ever.
Sail from the longhouse to a board carved in wood and gold, and play the way you like: alone against an opponent that genuinely pushes you, across the couch, or online with friends anywhere in the world. Twelve traditions of checkers, fifty languages, one longhouse.
Available now on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac — one purchase covers all four.
Get Odin’s Checkers on the App Store →
An opponent worth beating
Four difficulty levels — Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert — running on a real engine: alpha-beta search with move ordering, capture quiescence, and iterative deepening. The ladder is calibrated by self-play in every tradition, so every level is measurably stronger than the one below it. Expert will make you work.
Coaching built in
Switch hints on mid-game and see the recommended move highlighted right on the board. Undo takes back your last move, including the computer's reply. When a game ends, Watch Replay steps through it move by move — so a loss turns into a lesson.
Play with anyone
Pass & Play on a single device, with a hand-off banner between turns
Turn-based online — take your turn today, they take theirs tomorrow; matches wait for you
Live matches in real time, moves landing instantly
Nearby — on the same Wi-Fi you see each other by name and connect with a tap
Rematch and draw offers in both online modes
Every tradition plays online — invites name the variant up front, and Quick Async Match pairs you only with players on the same rules
A world of checkers
Checkers isn't one game — it's a family of games, and Odin's Checkers ships twelve of them. Pick a tradition on the World of Checkers screen and the board, the rules, and the AI all follow:
- American / English — the classic 8×8 game you grew up with
- International draughts — the 10×10 game: flying kings, maximum capture
- Brazilian — international rules on the classic 8×8 board
- Russian shashki — men promote mid-jump and keep capturing as kings
- Spanish — flying kings on a mirrored board, quality over quantity in captures
- Italian — men can never capture kings, and the most valuable capture is required
- Czech — when you can capture, kings must strike before men
- Thai makhos — eight men a side, and a king that halts the moment it strikes
- Canadian — a 12×12 board and thirty pieces a side, the widest sea of all
- Turkish dama — every square in play, pieces march straight, kings run the ranks and files like a rook
- Greek ntama — Turkish geometry, but the king must halt on the square just beyond its victim
- Giveaway — lose everything first and you win
Every tradition gets the same calibrated AI at all four difficulty levels, its own How to Play card, and saved games that remember which rules they were started under.
Speaks your language
The entire app — menus, coaching, rules, Siri, the widget — ships in 50 languages, from Spanish, French, and German to Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, and Ukrainian. Switch languages in-app and the change applies instantly, no relaunch; your pick follows you to your other devices through iCloud. Right-to-left scripts are fully supported, and on a shared Apple TV each family profile keeps its own language, saves, records, and Game Center sign-in.
Every screen, one purchase
Buy it once and play on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac. iCloud keeps your saved games, records, and streaks in sync across all of them. A home-screen widget shows which matches are waiting on your move, and Siri will "continue my Odin's Checkers game" to drop you straight back in.
Built with care
- Up to 6 save slots, auto-saved at every turn — rename, reorder, resume
- Game Center: 17 leaderboards and 28 achievements, plus a rank that climbs with every game you finish
- Apple TV: move around the board with the remote
- iPhone and iPad: tap to move, or pick a piece up and drag it
- Haptics matched to every sound effect
- VoiceOver labels on every square and full Reduce Motion support
No account required. No tracking. No nagging. Just checkers, done properly.
How to play
Checkers, the way you remember it — with every standard rule done right:
- Move diagonally forward, one square at a time, on the dark squares.
- Capture by jumping an adjacent enemy piece into the empty square beyond — and chain multi-jumps in a single turn when the board allows it.
- Crown a king by reaching the far row; kings move and capture backward too.
- Win by capturing every enemy piece — or leaving your opponent with no legal move.
In the app: tap a piece to see its legal moves, then tap the destination — or pick the piece up and drag it. On Apple TV, step square to square with the remote and press to select. On Mac, point and click. Turn on Coach for a recommended move, take back a slip with Undo, and run Watch Replay after the game to see exactly where it turned.
House rules
Two optional variations, set per match or as your default for new games:
- Forced captures (standard, on by default) — if a capture is available, you must take it.
- Flying kings — kings slide any distance along a diagonal, as in international draughts.
Underneath, the full standard ruleset: multi-jumps, king promotion, and threefold-repetition and no-progress draw detection. Choose an international tradition on the World of Checkers screen and that variant's own rules take over — any House Rules toggle the tradition fixes is locked, with the variant named as the reason.
Support & privacy
- Support — getting started, FAQs, and contact
- Privacy Policy — the short version: we collect nothing
- Ranks, leaderboards & achievements — how XP works, and every board and badge listed
Questions? Email sean@hollender-consulting.com.