Which free board game should I play? AI and local two-player guide
Start with Four in a Row for simple column selection, Gomoku for line building, Reversi for flipping strategy, checkers for capture chains or Dots and Boxes for scoring squares. All five run locally in your browser.
What rules do these games use?
Gomoku uses a 15×15 freestyle board: five or more stones wins, with no forbidden moves. Reversi uses an 8×8 board and automatic passes when no legal move exists. Four in a Row uses seven columns, six rows and gravity.
Checkers uses English rules: forward-only men, mandatory captures, continued jumps and crowning that ends the turn. Kings move in either diagonal direction. Eighty non-capture king plies draw; repetition draws are not implemented. Dots and Boxes uses sixteen boxes; completing a box grants another turn.
How do AI and two-player modes work?
Open Settings inside the game and select Against AI or Local two-player. Mint moves first; the AI plays Coral. Both players share one device in local mode. There is no online matchmaking or account. Changing mode or AI level starts a fresh game.
Easy, Normal and Hard use bounded local search. They describe search effort, not an Elo rating or guaranteed playing strength. AI calculations use a browser worker when available; the fallback uses a simpler one-step search.
How do I avoid accidental moves on a phone?
Tap a space to preview it and read the selected coordinates. In Gomoku and Reversi, tap that same space again to place your stone; tapping another space moves the preview. Confirm move also works. Checkers first selects a piece and then a legal destination. In Dots and Boxes, select the same edge again to draw; in Four in a Row, select the same column again to drop. Checkers moves when you select the marked destination.
Arrow keys or the on-screen arrows move the cursor; Enter or Space previews and confirms. Standard gamepad actions share this selection mapping, but physical controller and Tesla testing remains pending.
How do sound and volume work?
Turn on Sound in the player and adjust Effects volume in Settings. Stone placement, disc flips, captures and completed boxes have distinct synthesized effects, with separate win, loss and draw cues. Sound is initially off; your mute and volume choices are saved.
Audio starts only after a button press. Pausing or leaving the tab stops scheduled effects. Every turn and result also appears visually, so sound is optional.
Are games saved, and where are the ads?
Board, mode, difficulty and completed results are stored in this browser. Pause before leaving, and use the same browser profile to continue. Clearing site data removes progress. Games pause when the page loses visibility.
Catalogue and detail pages may contain clearly disclosed ad or affiliate positions. The board player has no display-ad slots. Advertising approval and serving are separate from a game being available.