Kaooa

Kaooa is a traditional hunt game for two players, documented in India in the early twentieth century and probably much older. Graffiti scratched with the same board pattern has been found at medieval sites such as Vijayanagara; that evidence is why the game is thought to be older than its first written record. The board is unusual because it is shaped like a five-pointed star, with the pieces moving along its lines and stopping on the points where those lines meet. One player controls a single piece called the tiger, and the other controls seven pieces called the kaooas. The kaooa player tries to hem the tiger in so that it cannot move, while the tiger captures by hopping over a kaooa, and it wins by capturing all of them. The Ludii portal catalogues it as a modern-period board game of the hunt type.