Every game we're building, in one place.

Seven flat stones, an old tennis ball, and grass-stained shins.

Lahore rooftop sunset. Manjha line. Wo kaata.

One breath. Touch a defender. Get back across the line.

Sit in a line. Run in a chain. Tag the last runner before they reach.

Flip the gilli, hit it mid-air, run while it lands.

Chalked grid on the verandah. Hop on one foot. Claim a square.

Tag while hopping on one foot. Switch feet, you're out.

Wind the rope. Throw the top. Outspin or be knocked.

Glass marbles on dirt. Flick. Win the marbles you knock out.

Powdered board. Striker thump. Cover the queen.

Roll a six to start. Knock the others home.

The original snakes-and-ladders, with each square a karma.

Tamil mancala — two rows, fourteen pits, cowrie shells.

Mughal cloth board. Cowrie dice. The court game of empires.

Telugu cousin of pachisi. Tamarind seeds for dice.

Sing a song. Last consonant starts the next. The bus ride game.

Hand-tap chant: tippy tippy tap, what colour do you want?

Eyes closed. The seeker counts. The verandah falls silent.

Tag with safe-zones. Punjabi schoolyard staple.

Two arches, a song, a chosen-one underneath.

Tag with poison-and-cure tags. The ressurector saves you.

Four folded chits. Roles revealed. The thief denies it.

A letter. A grid. The pen-and-paper classic.

Maharashtrian cousin of kho-kho. Cross all the trenches.

Hit the can with a stick. Race back to the line.

Bengali rural chase game with rope-tag dynamics.

Konkani spin-and-clap dance — circle in motion.

Kabul kite-fighting on Friday afternoons.

Sri Lanka's village bat-and-ball ancestor of cricket.

Iron-cast top. String wound, snapped, spun on a sheet.

Forty-eight cards, twelve months, a tatami room at night.

Black and white stones on a 19-by-19 wooden grid.

Japanese chess. Captured pieces re-enter, switching sides.

Hundred-poem cards. The reader chants. The hand snatches.

Wooden cup-and-ball. Three cups, one spike, one persistent ball.

Hammer the middle blocks out. Keep Daruma upright.

Blindfold pin-the-features-on-the-face — New Year's parlor game.

Slap a card down hard enough to flip the rival's.

Four wooden sticks for dice. Lunar new year staple.

Five plastic stones, five rounds, one uplifted hand.

Folded paper tiles slammed flat to flip the rival's.

Toss arrows into a narrow-mouthed pot. Court ritual turned game.

Korean chess on a 9-by-10 board with diagonal palaces.

Chinese chess across a river. Cannons jump to capture.

Tiles clack. Seasons, dragons, four hands at the table.

Feathered shuttlecock kept aloft by foot circle.

Vietnamese variant of xiangqi played on village stoops.

Indonesian hopscotch. Toss a stone into a chalked square.

Heavy wooden spinning top. Some weigh five kilograms.

Cross the grid. Defenders patrol each lane.

Cross the lines. Don't get tagged. Filipino schoolyard classic.

Knock the can. Outrun the prisoner. Filipino street legend.

Filipino mancala — two rows, sixteen pits, shells.

Volleyball with feet. Rattan ball. Acrobatic kicks.

Foot-shuttlecock in a Hanoi park at sunset.

Lunar New Year dice game with painted animals.

Five small fabric pillows. Toss-and-catch sequences.

Bamboo poles snapping in rhythm. Step in, step out.

Khmer rural tag with circle mechanics.

Cambodian mancala variant. Pebbles in carved pits.

Vietnamese mancala — mandarin pit captures the day.

Indonesian kite-fighting on Java's grassy fields.

Painted sheep knucklebones. Knock the rival's out of the line.

Horseback rugby with a goat carcass. Steppe ritual sport.

Uzbek board race with knucklebone dice.

Mongolian-style stone-throwing precision sport.

Sheep ankle bones — four sides, four oracles, infinite games.

Boy chases girl on horseback. She whips him if he fails.

Kazakh-Kyrgyz mancala. Nine pits, captured tuzdyks.

Tea-house backgammon. The dice clatter says everything.

Persian backgammon. Cousin of tavla, with an opening dialect.

Turkish gilli-danda. Two sticks, one flip-and-strike.

Turkish mancala — twelve pits, four stones each, no store.

Turkish seven-tiles cousin of pithoo.

Turkish leapfrog chain — bend over, jump the line.

Five-thousand-year-old Mesopotamian race game.

Bedouin race game played with palm sticks for dice.

Levantine pinecone clap-pass.

Armenian stone-throwing target game.

Georgian medieval rugby. Whole village, no rules.

Pharaoh's race game. Casting sticks for dice.

Spiral-board snake game predating chess by millennia.

Drawn in the sand. Capture by sandwich.

North African draughts. Mandatory captures.

Akan mancala. Twelve pits, forty-eight seeds.

Clap, jump, foot-out — Ghanaian schoolyard chant.

Nigerian shedding card game with shape suits.

Nigerian card game — declare and discard fast.

Congolese mancala played in the marketplace.

Swahili mancala. Carved board. Hours under the mango tree.

Ethiopian alignment-mill played with pebbles.

Shona mancala. Four rows. The marathon variant.

Tswana three-in-a-row turning into mill capture.

South African toss-and-catch with stones.

Southern African rummy variant.

French trick-taking card game. Trumps and partnerships.

Steel boules. Get closest to the cochonnet.

Horse chestnut on a string. Smash the rival's first.

Dutch shuffleboard — slide pucks into numbered slots.

German national card game. Trump-bidding by three.

Twenty-eight tiles. Match pip-to-pip.

Wooden batons, ten kubbs, one king. Knock 'em flat.

Numbered pins. Throw the molkky. Land exactly fifty.

Finnish baseball. Vertical pitch. Strange bases.

Italian forty-card trick-taking game. Pizzeria staple.

Basque four-handed bidding card game.

Iberian trick-taker with four-of-a-kind bonuses.

Mexican picture-bingo. La sirena, el corazón.

Polish elastic-rope jump game. Knees, hips, neck heights.

Polish thousand-point bidding card game.

Russian fool. Attack, defend, transfer. Last left is the durak.

Russian wooden-pin knockdown. Fifteen formations.

Russian bat-and-ball ancestor of cricket.

Cossacks-and-robbers — territorial chase across yards.

Balkan capture card game. Sums to fifteen.

Asphalt grid. Bounce. Don't get sent down to D.

Two ropes counter-rotating. Step in to the rhyme.

Brooklyn stoop ancestor of baseball.

Linked arms. Send a runner to break through.

Two flags. Two camps. Sneak across the line.

Cardboard discs and a slammer. Win the flips.

Indigenous bone-and-stick guess game with drum.

Inuit Olympics — kick a hanging seal-ball with one foot.

Wooden disc-flick board. Mennonite parlor classic.

Mexican cup-and-ball. Wooden, weighty, persistent.

Children's snake-pass-the-arch song.

Cuban Spanish-deck capture game.

Argentine bluffing card game. Lying is the point.

Brazilian dodgeball — burn the rival.

Brazilian card-slap-flip game with figurinhas.

Colombian metal-disc throw at gunpowder targets.

Brazilian hand-shuttlecock. Slap it across.

Andean toad-mouth coin-toss bar game.

Aboriginal possum-skin football precursor of AFL.

ANZAC day coin-toss betting game.

Garbage-bin stumps. Six and out. Nicks count.

Maori eight-point star board game.

Samoan village cricket — three-sided bat, hundreds of fielders.

Tongan disc-flick at a target on a mat.