DOC VERSION 2025-07-16 EN
Players take turns moving a piece one cell in any direction. Each cell may hold up to two pieces, but only the top one is playable. To win, a player must move their marble to the grid’s center — always atop one of their own tokens. A token placed on an opponent’s marble captures it. To capture a token, a player must use one from a single-color stack. If a player cannot move, their marble is removed and they are eliminated. Play continues with the others.
A game ends in a draw if neither player can win within the allotted number of turns or if all players are out of time. Currently, a game is limited to 100 turns without time limits.
ARKES is named after the Latin word arcēs (pronounced [aɾ.kεs]), meaning ‘you surround,’ ‘you defend,’ and also ‘citadels’ or ‘refuges’ — a nod to the game’s siege-war allegory. The terminology further reflects this theme: the contents of a cell are a formation; one with a token and a marble is a general; a single token is a unit. A stack of identical tokens form a tower, mixed-color ones a siege. The grid’s center is called the golden cell, or simply the gold.
On iOS, piece selection requires two distinct taps and some animation will not trigger. The game otherwise seems to work well on the most popular browsers on Android, MacOS and Windows..
www.zigzagemporium.com/aɾkεs/ (the Site) allows you to play ARKES without subscription, without fees, without ads and without your usage data being monetized by the site owner. Better yet, you may even download the site's pages to play offline if you will.
However, if you want to use the Site for commercial or educational purposes or if you want to use its code, even for personal purposes, please communicate with Jean-Philippe Mailloux via LinkedIn to obtain his permission.
ARKES, Arquesses, arcēs, aɾkεs, and [aɾ.kεs]—with or without the macron—are all expressions of a single trademark.
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