Lapilli Stones — Press Kit

Fact sheet and assets for press and creators

In one sentence

Lapilli Stones is a hand-crafted digital board game of five-in-a-row and capture — glass stones on a carved Roman board, wrapped in an original story of a game buried by Vesuvius — for iPhone, iPad, and Mac in a single purchase, with no ads, no subscriptions, and no tracking.

Fact sheet

Name: Lapilli Stones
Developer: Eddie Merkel (solo)
Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Mac — one purchase covers all three
Business model: Pay once. No ads, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no data collection
Modes: Vs. the computer (four tiers: Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Artisan), two players on one device, and asynchronous online play over Game Center
Rules: Standard, Keryo, and Tournament variants of the game known as Pente® (created by Gary Gabrel, 1977; gomoku/ninuki-renju lineage). Pente is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc., with which we are not affiliated.
Release: 2026 — App Store
Website: lapilli-stones.com
Contact: lapilli-stones@proton.me

The story

The game is framed by an original work of historical fiction: glass drops from a Pompeii furnace, a scratched nineteen-line grid in the back of a thermopolium, and an eruption that preserved a game mid-play for two thousand years. The full story has its own page. The game itself is the one the modern world knows as Pente — created by Gary Gabrel in 1977, its Keryo variant by champion Rollie Tesh in 1983 — presented under an original name because Pente® is Hasbro's registered trademark. The fiction is fiction, the game is real, and the story page says both plainly.

Screenshots

A five-in-a-row victory in Lapilli on iPhone

Download the press kit (ZIP, 25 MB, updated September 2, 2026) — the app icon at 1024×1024, full-resolution screenshots for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and a dated fact sheet. Anything else you need, write to lapilli-stones@proton.me and we'll send it the same day.

Review copies

Promo codes are available for press and creators — just ask.