Kings Row
About Kings Row
Kings Row is draughts on an eight by eight board, played against a computer that does not hand you anything. You take the amber discs on the near side, the machine takes the ink blue ones at the top, and both sides shuffle forward one diagonal step at a time until somebody overreaches. Capturing is compulsory here, and that is the whole game. The moment a jump exists you have to take it, so a disc left hanging in the wrong place can drag your whole formation into a swap you never wanted. Get a disc to the far row and it is crowned, and a crowned disc walks backwards as happily as forwards.
How to play
Tap one of your amber discs, then tap a marked square to move it there. The board glows under every disc that has a legal move.
Rules of Kings Row
- Discs sit on the dark squares only and move one diagonal step forward into an empty square.
- You capture by hopping over an adjacent enemy disc into the empty square directly beyond it.
- Capturing is compulsory. If any jump is available to you, you have to play a jump and not something quieter.
- A jump that lands you next to another capture carries on in the same turn, and the whole chain counts as one move.
- Reach the far row and the disc is crowned, marked with a K, and from then on it moves and jumps in both directions.
- A crown ends your turn straight away, even if another jump looks available from the new square.
- You win by taking every enemy disc, or by leaving your opponent with no legal move at all.
- The amber side always opens, and U takes back both your move and the machine's reply.
Controls
- Tap a disc to pick it up, tap a marked square to land on it
- U undoes your last move, R deals a fresh board
- ESC opens the pause panel
- Options sets the computer to easy, medium or hard
What makes it worth playing
- Three opponent strengths: easy plays any legal move, medium looks four plies ahead, and hard goes from eight plies down to twelve as the board thins.
- Every disc that can legally move pulses, so you never hunt for a compulsory jump.
- Pick a disc up and its landing squares appear as dots, rose for a capture and teal for a quiet move.
- Two people can share one screen, or you can sit back and watch two computers play each other.
- A running count of amber and ink discs sits at the top, so a bad trade shows up immediately.
Screenshots
Captured from this build on 2026-09-14.
Tips from playing it
- Hold your back row together for as long as you can. The two squares behind your line are the hardest ones for an opponent to crown through.
- Because capturing is forced, an offered disc is a lever. Work out what your opponent has to take before you place anything.
- Push up the sides early. A disc on the edge can only be jumped from one direction, so it costs less to advance.
- Trade discs off when you are ahead on count. The hard opponent scores trades the same way, and it will happily simplify against you.
- A crowned disc is worth roughly two ordinary ones in the machine's own scoring, so spending a plain disc to earn a crown is usually a good deal.
Why this game is here, and what we changed
The code still calls the two sides red and black. Nothing on screen does. The counters at the top read Amber and Ink, the discs are amber and a deep blue ink, and the squares under them are plum and ivory rather than cocoa and cream. Pick a disc up and the landing dots are colour coded, rose where a jump is waiting and teal for a quiet step. Forced capture we left alone. It is the rule the whole game hangs on, and every position worth thinking about comes out of it.
More on how we pick and fix these: how we make our own editions of classic games and how we test a game.
We wrote about this one
- How we make our own editions of classic games. A tableau of cards, a sliding tile square, four discs in a row. Nobody owns those rules. Here is what goes into turning one of them into a game that holds up on a phone.
- Category
- Board
- Plays in
- Your browser, no download
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Players
- Take the amber side against the machine, sit two people at one screen, or let it play itself.
- Difficulty
- Forced capture is the rule that bites, and the hard setting hunts twelve plies deep once six discs are left, which is far enough to see the swap you walked into.
- Typical session
- Eight to twenty minutes a game.
- Last tested by us
- 2026-09-14
