Gulugufe. yes, yes, we know! We had never heard of it either! But here it is. The word gulugufe means Butterfly in the Chitonga language of Mozambique.

The Butterfly game board is carefully desgined in the shape of a large butterfly from beautiful and rare ebony (mwanga) heartwood.

The game plays a little like draughts (dammi) or Nine Men's Morris.

The Play of the Butterfly Game

The goal is to capture all of the opponent's pieces, or be the one with more pieces when no more pieces can be taken by either player, or stalemate the other opponent's pieces such that they are immobilised.

There are a total of 19 intersection points for the pieces to be played upon.

Each player has nine pieces. One player plays Dark, and the other player plays Light, however, any two colours will suffice.

• The centre position is kept empty at the start of the Gulugufe game. Pieces are captured by hopping over them.
• A piece moves one space per turn onto a vacant intersection point following the pattern on the board.
• Captures are done by the short leap as in Draughts and Alquerque, where the adjacent enemy piece is hopped over onto a vacant point on the other side.
• The captures must be done in a straight line following the pattern on the board.
• Multiple captures are allowed in Gulugufe as long as there is one vacant point in between the enemy pieces, and a vacant point beyond the last enemy piece.
• Captures are compulsory. If there are several options to capture in one turn, the player may choose any one of them.
• Captured pieces are removed from the board.
• If a player cannot perform a move or a capture because its pieces have been blocked or immobilised by the other player's pieces, this is known as a stalemate, and the player loses; the other player wins.
• If neither player can capture anymore pieces, the player with more pieces wins. If both players have the same amount of pieces, then the game is a draw.