Odin's Chinese Checkers

Need a hand? Email sean@hollender-consulting.com and I'll get back to you.

GETTING STARTED

Odin's Chinese Checkers is a one-time purchase: no ads, no tracking and nothing more to buy. It plays on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac — on the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV its icon is named Odin's Star — and everything but the online modes, leaderboards and achievements works with no account and no network at all.

The game is played on a six-pointed star of holes. Each player's stones start in one point of the star, their camp, and their goal is the camp straight across. On your turn you move one stone: a step to a neighboring empty hole, or a hop over a neighboring stone — anyone's — to the empty hole just beyond it, and from there another hop, and another, turning as you like and stopping wherever you choose. Pick up a stone and dots show every hole it can reach; set it down on one and it hops there, hop by hop. Nothing is ever taken, except in The Raid. The first player to fill the camp across the star wins.

Two rules keep every game fair, without anything to switch on. A stone may hop through a camp that is neither its home nor its goal, but it may not stop there. And a stone its owner leaves at home, in the camp you are filling, counts for you: staying home cannot stop you finishing. A player with no legal move passes.

• iPhone and iPad — tap a stone, then tap the hole it should go to, or drag it there. A finger close to a hole counts as that hole, and the stone you lift is drawn above your finger, so even the small holes on an iPhone are easy to hit.
• 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.
• Apple TV — swipe on the remote to move the highlight along the lines of the star and click to pick up a stone, then move to the hole it should go to and click again. During a game, Back (Menu) or Play/Pause opens the Paused card, with Resume and Main Menu; on any other screen, Back closes it.
• Mac — click a stone, then click the hole it should go to, or drag it there; or move the highlight along the star with the arrow keys and press Return to pick up and put down. Esc puts a picked-up stone back. The Help menu opens the Video Instructions and How to Play.

WAYS TO PLAY

• Vs the computer — Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert, at a table of two, three, four or six: you and up to five computers.
• Pass & Play — up to six players sharing one screen, and every seat can be a person or a computer at any strength; after each move the screen says whose turn it is.
• Play Online — two to four players: Quick Async Match, Live Match, or an invitation to a friend.
• Play Someone Nearby — two to four devices in the same room, no account needed.

The Star, Little Star and The Raid seat two, three, four or six; Halma seats two or four. There is no table of five: one player would face an empty camp, and that is an edge.

VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS

The Video Instructions teach the game in about three minutes, on the real board: how to use the app — moving a stone, the game screen's buttons, the main menu and Settings — then steps and chains of hops, ladders and stragglers, the camps' rules, the tables for two, three, four and six, Little Star, The Raid, Halma, the House Rules, the ways to play and the Solo Sprint. On an iPhone Duo they end with half a minute more, a chapter on the phone's poses. Open them from the link at the top of the main menu, from any How to Play page, or on a Mac from the Help menu. The player has chapters, a transcript of every caption and five-second skips; with Reduce Motion on, it moves one step at a time instead.

THE FOUR BOARDS

• Star — the classic: a six-pointed star of 121 holes, ten stones each, for two, three, four or six.
• Little Star — the quick board: a smaller star of 73 holes, six stones each, for two, three, four or six.
• The Raid — the capture game on the Star. Sixty stones fill the hall around an empty centre, and every move is a hop that takes the stone it jumps, whoever's it is. The game ends when no hop is left, and whoever has taken the most wins. For two, three, four or six.
• Halma — the 1883 original, on a board of 16 × 16 squares: a step or a chain of hops in any of eight directions, from your corner to the corner across. Nineteen stones each for two players, thirteen each for four.

Choose a board before you start; a game already under way keeps the board it started on. How to Play gives you the rules of whichever board is selected and the House Rules it can play, with a card for each House Rule that is on, and then every board in brief.

HOUSE RULES

House Rules adds six optional rules. Switch on any of them; each says which boards and tables it applies to, and a game where it cannot apply is played without it:

• Long Jump — a hop may cross any distance in a straight line, over exactly one stone standing at the midpoint, every other hole between them empty. On the Star, Little Star and Halma.
• Full Camp — fifteen stones each: the camp and the row of the hall in front of it. On the Star, for two or three players.
• The Jarl's Stone — each player's stone at the tip of the camp is a jarl: it may hop any stone, and no common stone may hop it. On the Star and Little Star.
• Last Word — in a two-player game, when the player who moved first fills the camp first, the other player takes one more turn; if that fills their camp too, the game is a draw. Not in The Raid.
• Play It Out — at a table of three or more on one device, solo or Pass & Play, the game goes on after the first player finishes until one player is left, and everyone is placed in finishing order. Not in The Raid.
• Short Night — on one device, solo or Pass & Play, each player has a limited number of moves; when they run out, the stones in the goal decide the places, then the distance left. Online games always have a move limit.

House Rules apply to every new game — solo, Pass & Play, online and nearby — and never change a game already under way; a saved game keeps the rules it started with. Online and nearby, a game is played under the House Rules of the player who opens it, and an invitation from a friend for a turn-based game, or from someone nearby, names those rules before you accept. A win against the computer with a House Rule in play earns the Law of the Longhouse achievement.

THE CLANS, THE STONES AND THE BOARD

Each player is one of six clans — Raven, Wolf, Bear, Boar, Stag and Serpent — and each clan's stones have their own color and their own sigil, so no stone is ever told apart by color alone. Settings offers three sets of stones — painted (each clan's animal), rune (the clan's rune cut into a polished stone) and the plain Sigils (each clan's rune on a flat disc of its color, the easiest to read) — and four looks for the board: oak (the default), oak and iron, engraved cherry and green leather.

All of these belong to your device — an online opponent sees the stones and board they picked — and they are only a look: they never change how the game plays, and there is nothing to collect or unlock.

THE TABLE AND THE RESULTS

The banner names the clan to move and its player, and the table shows how many stones each player has home. A game ends at the first finish: the first player to fill their goal wins, and every other place is decided by the stones in their goal, then by how far the rest still have to go; players who are level share a place. The results card lists the places with the reason for each. Online, every game ends: after a set number of moves, places are decided the same way.

THE COMPUTER OPPONENTS

Four strengths that genuinely play differently. Easy plays loosely, but it never strands a stone on purpose. Medium looks a few moves ahead and now and then plays a move nearly as good as its best. Hard and Expert search the table's replies — at three or more players, against the best reply any opponent has — Hard thinking for about a second and Expert for up to three, always playing the move its search likes best. One leaderboard counts only some games: the fastest-Expert leaderboard takes times from two-player games on the Star and Halma only, played without the Coach or a House Rule.

THE COACH

Switch the Coach on before a game against the computer, or turn it on during one, and it marks the move it would make — the stone and where it lands — and says what a move does: it warns you when a move leaves your last stone behind, when a ladder you build can carry an opponent too, and when a longer hop was there; and when you try to stop in another clan's camp, it says why you can't. It exists only in games against the computer and in the Solo Sprint, where it warns but never suggests a move.

A game you start with the Coach switched on still goes into your record, but it earns no XP. Turning the Coach on part-way through a game marks that game as assisted, and the app says so first: it still earns XP and counts in your record, but it stays off the best-streak and fastest-Expert leaderboards and out of the Unaided achievement.

THE SOLO SPRINT

The Solo Sprint, a door on the solo screen, is a race against the record: fill the camp across the star alone, in as few moves as you can. The fewest possible is 27 — found by Octave Levenspiel in 1971 and proved the shortest possible by G. I. Bell in 2009 — and the door and the game keep your best beside it. Every move counts one; Undo takes one back. Thirty moves or fewer earns an achievement, and your best goes to the Solo Sprint leaderboard, where the fewest moves rank first. A run you leave is kept with your saved games and carries on with its count. In a Sprint the Coach only warns when a move would leave a stone behind, and never suggests a move. A coached run counts, but it is not kept as your best. A Sprint earns no XP: it keeps your fewest moves.

UNDO AND RESTART

Undo takes back your last move: against the computer, the computers' replies go too, so the board is back where it was your move; in Pass & Play it takes back one move. Restart clears the board and starts a new game on the same board at the same table, with the House Rules as they are set now. Neither exists in an online match — there is no taking a move back from an opponent.

SAVED GAMES

Up to six games are kept, and every move saves automatically, so leaving the app never loses a game. The game at the top of your list is the Continue card on the main menu, and a new game joins the list at the top. A finished game leaves the list. Turn-based online matches are not saved this way — they live on Game Center's side and wait for you on the Play Online hub — and a live or nearby game ends if its players leave it.

MY GAMES AREN'T SYNCING BETWEEN DEVICES

Saved games, your records, your rank and even your chosen language sync through your own iCloud account; your House Rules, your stones, the board's look and your sound setting stay on each device. Make sure every device is signed in to the same Apple Account with iCloud Drive turned on. On Apple TV that is under Settings > Users and Accounts. After a fresh install it can take a moment — or one relaunch — for the first sync to arrive.

APPLE TV IS A SHARED DEVICE

On Apple TV each person's profile gets its own saved games, records, rank and Game Center account. Switching profiles in Control Center switches the app over to that person's games. A whole table can still play on one TV: Pass & Play passes the remote around.

PLAYING ONLINE

Three ways to play people who aren't in the room, at a table of two, three or four:

• Quick Async Match — finds other players for the board and the number of players you chose. It is turn-based, so everyone moves at their own pace over hours or days, and Game Center tells you when it's your move.
• Live Match — everyone connected at once, moves landing instantly.
• Invite a Friend — choose Live or Async, pick your friends, and they are asked to accept. An async invitation names the board and any House Rules before anyone joins.

These three need you signed in to Game Center (Settings > Game Center), and so do the leaderboards and achievements. Matches waiting on you are listed under Your Move. In a live or nearby game the first player is drawn by lot and a rematch passes the first move on; in a turn-based match the player who starts it moves first. If a player leaves a game of three or four, the computer plays their stones on at Easy so the others can finish. A two-player game is ranked; a game of three or four earns XP by your place.

WHY CAN'T THIS ACCOUNT SEND A LIVE INVITATION?

Because Game Center will not deliver a live invitation from an account that has communication limits, and on a child account those come from the account's age under Family Sharing — not from anything set in Screen Time. Nothing you can switch on the device changes it. The app checks before it asks, so you get an explanation instead of an invitation that silently never arrives.

Everything else on that account still works: Live Match will still find random opponents, a friend can still invite that account, Quick Async Match works normally, and Play Someone Nearby doesn't use Game Center at all.

There is a second, different case. If Multiplayer Games is switched off for the account, live play cannot connect at all — and that one IS a Screen Time setting. Whoever set the device up can allow it under Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions. Nearby play works either way.

LIVE MATCH ON APPLE TV

Apple allows real-time matchmaking only for the Apple TV's main user. An added profile is refused by Game Center itself, even when it is signed in to iCloud, and the app says so on the search screen rather than spinning. Quick Async Match works for every profile, and so does Play Someone Nearby.

PLAYING SOMEONE NEARBY

Play Someone Nearby is separate from the three modes above and does not need Game Center or the internet. Two to four devices on the same local network find each other and connect directly. Each device is listed by name: your Game Center nickname and the kind of device — "Erik · iPad", say — if you are signed in, otherwise the device's own name. Whoever sends the invitation chooses the board, and the invitation names the board and the sender's House Rules before the others accept. If a connection drops during a game, the board says so and the devices spend up to 90 seconds reconnecting before the game is called off.

I CAN'T FIND ANYONE NEARBY

Every device has to be on the same network with the Play Someone Nearby screen open — opening it is what starts the search. The first time you open it, the device asks permission to find things on your local network; if that was declined the app cannot see anyone, and it will say so. Turn it back on in Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network (on Mac, System Settings > Privacy & Security > Local Network).

CAN I PLAY WITHOUT AN INTERNET CONNECTION?

Yes. All four boards, all six House Rules, the Solo Sprint, all four computer strengths, Pass & Play, saved games, undo, the Coach and the Video Instructions work with no network at all and with no account. Only the online modes, leaderboards and achievements need connectivity — Play Someone Nearby needs a local network but no internet.

RANK, LEADERBOARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Every finished game against the computer, online or nearby earns XP, and XP climbs your level: Wanderer, Raider, Shieldbearer, Huscarl, Jarl, High King, and then Grand King, numbered again every five levels. Against the computer a win earns the full amount for the strength you beat — Expert is worth twelve times Easy — and the board scales it: the short games, Little Star and The Raid, are worth three quarters of the Star and Halma. At a table of three or more, your place decides your share. Online, a two-player game against a player ranked above you is worth more and one against a player below you less. The first XP-earning game you play on each board each day carries a small bonus. Your Rank, opened from the rank badge, shows where you stand; Your Games keeps your wins, games played, best streak and record on each board.

Signed in to Game Center there are 11 leaderboards — total wins, best streak, fastest Expert win, weekly wins, online wins, rank, one for each of the four boards and one for the Solo Sprint — and 28 achievements. Trophies on the main menu opens them.

WHY DIDN'T THAT GAME EARN ANY XP?

Four reasons, all deliberate. Pass & Play earns nothing when two or more people share the table, because there is no single player to credit. A game started with the Coach switched on earns nothing. The Solo Sprint earns no XP: it keeps your fewest moves instead. And there is a daily ceiling of 600 XP on games against the computer — once you reach it the result screen says so, and it resets the next day. Games against other people are not capped.

I CAN'T HEAR ANY SOUND

Sound has its own switch inside the app — among the game's controls, in Settings, and on a Mac in the Game menu — and it is deliberately independent of the ring/silent switch, so check the in-app setting first. iPhone also plays a small haptic with each sound, and that one is independent of the sound setting; iPad has no haptic engine, so it stays quiet there by design.

WIDGET AND SIRI

On iPhone and iPad, the Your Turn widget shows a turn-based match that is waiting on your move; tapping it opens that match. You can also say "Continue my Odin's Star game" to Siri, which opens your most recent game.

CHANGING THE LANGUAGE

Odin's Chinese Checkers is playable in 50 languages. It follows your device by default, and you can override it under Settings > Language — the change applies immediately, with no relaunch, and travels to your other devices through iCloud.

ACCESSIBILITY

Every hole of the board is a button that VoiceOver reads by where it is and what is in it — a clan's stone, or empty — and by what it offers now: selected, a hole you can move to, the Coach's recommended move or the last move. The Coach's warnings and the result of a game are spoken as they appear. The clans differ by sigil as well as by color, and by name wherever it matters. On iPhone and iPad, text follows your Dynamic Type size, and with Reduce Motion on, a moving stone fades from its hole to the new one instead of hopping.

IS THERE ANYTHING TO BUY INSIDE THE APP?

No. Your purchase is the whole game: there are no ads, no tracking, no in-app purchases, no subscription and no locked boards. There are no analytics and no third-party software development kits of any kind in the app, and nothing about you is collected or sent to us. The only thing the app ever promotes is our own other games: More Games From Us opens our page on the App Store (on Apple TV, a code to scan with your phone), and you can walk straight past it. On iPhone, iPad and Mac, after your third, tenth and twenty-fifth finished game in which you did not come last — against the computer, Pass & Play, nearby or online, but never a Solo Sprint — it may ask, through Apple's own rating prompt, whether you'd rate it: never more than once a session or once a month, and never again once you have tapped Rate. The full details are on the privacy page: https://www.hollender-consulting.com/odins-chinese-checkers-privacy

CONTACT

sean@hollender-consulting.com

Hollender Consulting, LLC — https://www.hollender-consulting.com/