What's Coming

The road ahead for Lapilli Stones

Lapilli Stones is finished in the sense that matters — the game is complete, and every update below is free to anyone who owns it. This page is where the next chapters get written down. Dates are deliberately absent; the work is done when it's good.

The Companion Book

A full companion book, included with the app. Over a hundred and sixty pages on the game — its rules, its shapes, its strategy, and the legend it comes wrapped in — delivered inside the app itself. No purchase, no code, no catch: if you own the game, you own the book.
First move or second, in your record. The record already knows who you played and under which rules. It will also know whether you opened the game or answered it — because that, not the colour of the stones, is where most players find their weakness.
Every game written down. Games are recorded as they're played, in a plain notation you can save, export, and send to another player — or to us. This lands early on purpose: every game recorded from here on becomes part of your history for what follows.

Study Your Games

After that

A mirror for your play. The same judge that powers the computer opponents reads back through your recorded games and finds the mistakes you repeat — the capture threat you keep missing, the open three you keep forgiving — and shows whether they're fading as you improve. All of it on your device; your games are read by your own machine and no one else's.
Walk back through a finished game. Step move by move through a game you've played, with the computer's read of each position beside you. Turning “I lost” into “I lost here.”
A proper end to a game. The final board, the captures, the count of moves — and the things you actually want next: rematch, review, export.
Rematch, with the first move swapped. One tap to play the same opponent again, from the other side of the opening.
Your matches, on the board's edge. Correspondence games move out of the settings and onto the main screen — a sidebar list on the bigger screens, a slim strip of name-chips on the phone — so seeing whose move it is never costs a tap. (A tester's suggestion, from the family that tests everything.)

The Practice Board

Later

A board with two bowls beside it. Place stones wherever you like, work a position out by hand, and keep a note of what you found — no turns, no opponent, no clock.
The book's problems, playable. Positions from the companion book, opened on a real board, with your solutions remembered.
A hint that tells you why. Not just where to play, but what it's answering — in the language the book teaches.

Ideas are welcome and often become entries on this page. Nearly every improvement in the game so far started as a message from someone playing it — write to lapilli-stones@proton.me.