Play Wari - The Ancient Game of Africa Online

Game Overview

Ever fire up an old MS-DOS game and immediately feel like you're holding something ancient—in a good way? Wari - The Ancient Game of Africa does that. It's basically digital Mancala, but with that crunchy early-PC aesthetic. You’re just moving seeds around pits, trying to outsmart the AI (or a buddy, if you’ve got one nostalgic enough to play along). Sounds simple, right? Then you make one careless move and suddenly the computer’s cleaned out half your side.

No frills here—just a stark green-and-black screen and that satisfying little click-click sound every time you drop a seed. It’s the kind of game where you’ll lean in, squint at the screen, and mutter “wait, no—” right before realizing your mistake. If you’ve ever lost hours to chess or Go, this’ll hook you the same way. Bonus: you get to tell people you’re playing a 4,000-year-old African strategy game while your friends are stuck on Candy Crush.

Still holds up if you’ve got the patience for old-school, thinky games. Just don’t blame me when you’re three matches deep at 2 AM.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".