⭕ Gomoku
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VI
Take turns placing your mark on the 9×9 board. The first player to get five of their own in a row — across, down or diagonally — wins. That is the entire game. A four-year-old can be taught it in under a minute, which is why it is the game we point parents at first when chess is still too much.
Tiger always goes first. In "2 players" you pass the device back and forth; in "Computer plays Rabbit" the machine takes the Rabbit and plays gently enough that a small child wins a fair share of the time. The scoreboard keeps a running tally across games, and ↩ Undo takes back a move that was placed by accident — a real problem on a touchscreen with small fingers.
Every piece is the same and never moves once placed, so there is nothing to memorise and no way to lose track of the board. What is left is the one skill that matters: noticing that your opponent has three in a row and will have four next turn. Spotting that, and blocking it, is often the first genuinely strategic thought a child has — and it arrives years before they could hold a chess plan in their head.
From about four. The rule is short enough to explain once, and because nothing moves after it is placed, a young child can look at the board and still understand what happened.
A full board takes too long for a young child to stay with, and the middle of it feels empty. On 9×9 a game lasts a few minutes and every move already matters, which keeps the ending in sight.
It is deliberately gentle. It blocks the obvious threats and takes an obvious win, but it does not plan far ahead, so a child who has understood the game beats it regularly. Beating it should feel earned, not given.
No account, ever. The page loads over the internet once; the scoreboard is kept in your own browser and never sent anywhere.
Every game here is free, runs in the browser, and can be played by two people on one screen.