Jogo Da Onça

Last year my wife and I visited Iguazu falls on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. We had a amazing time. We stayed at Overo Lodge & Selva on the Argentinian side of the falls.

In the hotel lobby there was a board game I had never seen before. Which is not too much of a surprise as I am only familiar with few board games, namely checkers, chess, and snakes and ladders.

I asked the receptionist about the game and he was more than happy to explain it. The following is what I understood from his explanation:

It's a two player strategy game from one of the indigenous tribes in Brazil. The game consists of only two types of pieces, 1 Jaguar and 14 dogs.

Jaguar

• Starts in the center position of the board
• Can move to any adjacent position along the lines
• Captures dogs by jumping over them like checkers
• Can capture multiple dogs in one turn like checkers
• Capturing is not mandatory
• Wins by capturing 5 dogs

Dogs

• Start in the upper positions of the board (14 dogs)
• Can move to adjacent empty positions along the lines
• Cannot capture or jump over the jaguar
• Can not move backwards up the board
• Work together to surround the jaguar
• Win by trapping the jaguar so it cannot move

I was fascinated by the game and wanted to play it with other people, so I built a web version here.

It's still a work in progress. The computer just makes random moves in the "Play vs Computer” option. My next goal is to train a model using reinforcement learning to play the game strategically.