Bagh Bondi
The traditional Bangladeshi board game, online
The question
Can a pebble game played on rural Bangladeshi ground survive as a browser game that is entirely in Bangla, with an opponent good enough to lose to?
বাঘ বন্দি, the tigers-and-goats board game of rural Bangladesh, playable in the browser: two tigers against twenty goats on a 5×5 board, against a friend or against an AI opponent, entirely in Bangla, on phone or desktop.
how it is put together
The game
Goats are placed one by one, then move; tigers jump to capture. Goats win by trapping both tigers, tigers win by eating enough goats. The board is the traditional 5×5 grid with orthogonal and diagonal lines.
Why
The games my grandparents played on the ground with pebbles deserve a place on a phone. The interface, the rules, and the help are all in Bangla, and the AI opponent is good enough to lose to.
Screens and recordings
Connections
Other work that sits in some of the same fields. The overlap is what the map draws.