Play Starling Hill Reversi

How to play Starling Hill Reversi

Classic reversi on a wooden board on a hilltop at dusk. Trap lines of discs to turn them over to your side, take the corners and finish with the most discs, against Tobias the tortoise at three levels.

1. Press Play. The board has 64 squares in 8 rows of 8. Four discs start in the middle: two moon discs on one diagonal and two sun discs on the other. By default you play moon, and moon always moves first.
2. On your turn, tap a square with a dot. A legal move places your disc next to one or more of Tobias’s discs so that a straight line of his discs, across, up and down or diagonally, runs from your new disc to another of yours with no gaps.
3. Every disc in every line you trap turns over to your face at once. Only lines that end at the disc you just placed turn over, and a move must turn over at least one disc.
4. If you have no legal move, you pass and Tobias plays again; the game passes for you and says so. You may not pass while you have a move.
5. The game ends when neither of you can move, usually when the board is full. The side with more discs on the board wins, and equal counts are a draw.

Controls

• Touch or mouse: tap a square with a dot to play there. With a mouse, resting on a dotted square rings the discs that move would turn over. Tapping during a flip finishes it at once. Undo, Hint and Menu sit on the shelf below the board, or beside it on a wide screen.
• Keyboard: the arrow keys move a visible focus around the board (with the move dots on, the discs a move there would turn over are ringed), and Enter or Space plays the square in focus. U undoes, H shows a hint, and Escape clears the hint.
• Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, changes Tobias’s level, your side, the board size, the move dots and the flip speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.