Chinese Checkers

Odin's Chinese Checkers is the star game everyone knows, carved in oak: a six-pointed star of 121 holes, a camp at every point, and six Viking clans for the stones — Raven, Wolf, Bear, Boar, Stag and Serpent, each with its own color and sigil. Step to the next hole, or hop a stone and keep hopping, and be first to fill the camp across the star.

Painted stones or rune stones; an oak, iron-bound, engraved cherry or green leather board.

Two to six at one table

Two, three, four or six players around one star, on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac, for one purchase. The Apple TV seats the whole table on the couch with the Siri Remote, the Mac is a native app with menus and the keyboard, and on iPhone and iPad you tap or drag a stone.

Optimized for iPhone Duo

Open the phone and the star fills the inner display; close it and your game carries on, on the outer display, right where you were.

Any mix of people and computers

Six people on a couch, two people and four computers, or you against five: every seat is a person or a computer at Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert. Pass & Play puts the whole table on one screen. Play Someone Nearby links two to four devices in the room, with no account. Through Game Center, two to four play live or turn-based, with your move waiting on top. No sign-up, no company server, no subscription.

A game that always finishes

Nobody can block your goal by staying home: their stones left there count for you. A stone may hop through another clan's camp but never stop in it, and every online game ends. The computer plans against the whole table's replies, with methods researchers developed on this very game, at four strengths: from a child's first game to an Expert built not to leave a straggler.

Learn as you play

The Coach says what a move does: it warns before you leave your last stone behind, shows when an opponent can use your ladder too, and tells you when a longer hop was there. Every board has its How to Play, and the Video Instructions teach on the real board, chapter by chapter — captioned, offline, in 50 languages.

Four boards, six house Rules and the Sprint

• Long Jump
• Full Camp
• The Jarl's Stone
• Last Word
• Play It Out
• Short Night

House Rules change the boards that allow them — Long Jump, Full Camp, the Jarl's Stone, Last Word, Play It Out and Short Night — and a turn-based or nearby invitation names them before anyone joins. The Solo Sprint: fill the far camp alone in the fewest moves. The fewest possible is 27, found in 1971.

A place in the family

The same menu, controls and ranks as Odin's Checkers. Earn XP and climb from Wanderer to Grand King, chase 28 achievements and 11 Game Center leaderboards, and pick up your game on any of your devices through iCloud.

More from Odin’s

Made by the team behind Odin's Checkers, Squared², Odin's Tic-Tac-Toe, Odin's Viking Chess, Odin's Drop 4+, Odin's Reversi and Odin's Chess.

Step, hop, and fill the camp across the star.