How to play
Halma is a race, not a battle. Each player has 15 marbles in a triangle-shaped camp in one corner of the 10 × 10 board: Red starts bottom-left and moves first, Blue starts top-right. You win by moving all of your marbles into the opposite corner, the camp your opponent started from. Nothing is ever captured.
Moving. On your turn, move one marble in one of two ways:
- Step to any empty neighbouring square, in any of the eight directions.
- Jump over a neighbouring marble of either colour to the empty square directly beyond it. After a jump you may keep jumping with the same marble, changing direction as you like, as long as each hop goes over a marble onto an empty square. A single turn can carry a marble across most of the board.
Tap a marble to see every square it can reach, then tap the destination: the game works out the chain of jumps for you.
Leaving home. Once a marble has left your starting camp it may never return to it. Marbles still inside the camp may shuffle within it.
Winning. When all 15 squares of your target camp are occupied and at least one of them holds your marble, you win. This means an opponent who leaves marbles sitting in their own camp cannot block you forever: you win by filling every square they left free. If a game reaches 600 moves, the player whose marbles are closer to their goal wins; an exact tie is a draw.
At the top, choose your Opponent. Against the Computer you play Red and can pick Easy, Medium or Hard. Choose Friend to play two people on one device; the strip of the player to move lights up. Hint shows a good move, and Undo takes back one move against a friend, or your move together with the computer’s answer.
Strategy
- Build ladders. A line of marbles spaced one square apart is a highway: a marble can hop along the whole line in one turn. Set up ladders pointing at your goal, and use the ones your opponent builds too.
- Move as a group. Marbles that run ahead alone have nothing to jump over, and stragglers left behind cost you the game at the end. Keep the pack together so every marble has a jump available.
- Watch the last marble. The game is decided by your slowest piece. Move the back marbles early, while the ladders through the middle still exist.
- Do not leave your camp blocked. Marbles that linger at home get in the way of your opponent’s arrival, but they also cannot get out once the board fills, and you still need them at the other end.
- Deny the long jump. Sometimes the best move is a short step that breaks a ladder your opponent was about to use.
The computer scores positions by the total distance of each side’s marbles from their goal, with a penalty for the marble furthest behind, and searches a few moves ahead. In our tests the hard level beat the easy level in every game between them.
If you enjoy jumping games, try Checkers or Turkish Draughts next.
If you enjoy Halma, try Hex or International Draughts next.
