Trist

Trist is a 1993 Macintosh board game by Tom Gooding inspired by the ancient sowing family that includes Mancala. Players move stones around a shared board and try to land on squares holding two or three stones, capturing them for points. A built-in tutorial and adjustable settings ease newcomers into the rules.

How it plays

Each turn you pick up the stones from one of your pits and sow them around the board one at a time. Landing the final stone on a pit that brings its total to two or three captures the contents, scoring points and clearing the square.

Customization

Trist exposes the parameters that usually distinguish Mancala variants: starting stone counts and per-pit limits can be adjusted, and the computer opponent ships with multiple difficulty levels for solo practice or a quick warm-up before a human match.

System support

The game is 68k-native and runs cleanly on System 7.0 through 7.6 and on Mac OS 9, including PowerPC machines via the 68k emulator. It also runs well under SheepShaver and Basilisk II for modern revivals.

Why try it

For an early-90s shareware title, Trist is unusually approachable: the tutorial, tunable rules, and small footprint make it a friendly introduction to Mancala-style play on Classic Mac hardware.