Every piece
is a lie.
Two armies. Forty-two hidden ranks. The board tells you where the pieces are, never what they are. Win by reading the enemy before they read you.
Born on a table in the Philippines.
Game of the Generals, known at home as Salpakan, was invented in 1970 by Sofronio H. Pasola Jr. He borrowed the ranks of the armed forces and hid them behind a simple idea: what if you knew where an army stood, but never what it was made of?
The result plays nothing like chess, where both sides see everything. Here the information itself is the battlefield. A five-star General and a lowly Private look identical to your opponent, so a Private can march forward like a threat, and a General can hide in the back like a coward. Bluff is not a tactic here. It is the whole game.
Half a century later it is still played across kitchen tables, classrooms, and barracks. This is that game, dealt onto a browser tab, with a neutral arbiter that never leaks a rank.
“Chess with a poker face.”
Three rules run the whole battle.
Rule 1 of 3
Deploy in the darkEach side arranges 21 pieces across its three back rows. You see the faces of your own army; your opponent sees only blank backs, exactly as you see theirs.Rule 2 of 3
One square, one turnEvery piece moves a single square up, down, or sideways. No jumps, no diagonals, no charges. The whole war is fought one careful step at a time.Rule 3 of 3
Judged in silenceMove onto an enemy piece to challenge it. A neutral arbiter compares the hidden ranks and removes the loser. Neither player is told what the fallen piece was.
Fifteen ranks. Three that break the rules.
Highest to lowest
- ★★★★★5-Star General
- ★★★★4-Star General
- ★★★3-Star General
- ★★2-Star General
- ★1-Star General
- ▲▲▲Colonel
- ▲▲Lt. Colonel
- ▲Major
- ◆◆◆Captain
- ◆◆1st Lieutenant
- ◆2nd Lieutenant
- ∧∧∧Sergeant
- ∧Private
- ◉Spy
- ⚑Flag
The spy outranks every general
A Spy quietly removes any officer it touches, from a Sergeant to a five-star General. Rank means nothing to it.
But a private kills the spy
The lowest piece on the board is the only one a Spy fears. Six of them are hunting, and none of them are marked.
The flag beats only the flag
Your Flag loses to everything except the enemy Flag. Everyone knows where it should be. Nobody knows where it is.
Take the enemy Flag, or walk your own Flag to the far edge. Do it before your opponent figures out which of your pieces was bluffing. The full rules are on the how to play page.
Aligway
Studios
A small studio putting Filipino games on the web, built to be played the way they were meant to be played. We started with the one every commander at home already knows.
Live board games
Turn logic, matchmaking, and rooms built to sync two commanders in real time.
Rules engines
The rank food chain, the arbiter, and win conditions modeled so the game is always fair and never guesses.
Interfaces with a point of view
A war-room look that treats a browser tab like an officer's table, not a settings menu.
Your move,
General.
Built by Aligway Studios · No account · No download