Spark & Anvil Privacy
Hollowmere Valley: a calm woodland meadow between two small animal villages of round burrow doors and mossy logs, with two still blue ponds, where a bear, a wolf, a tiny mouse, a badger, hares and a small owl play a gentle game of hide-and-seek

BluffForge

You can’t see their army. You can see how it moves. What will you believe — and why?

🌙 Plan your army →

More ways to play

Kicker and keeper

How it works

  • Hidden numbers. Each side hides its army. When two pieces meet, both turn over and the lower number goes home (equal: both). Puck the small one beats Ursa, the 10 — but only when Puck strikes first.
  • 📒 The Belief Ledger. Tap a hidden piece and place a guess chip. It only sticks if your reason is true: it never moved, it ran far, it backed away from your piece. The app never tells you during the game. At the end, each chip warms or cools.
  • 🗺️ Blueprint. Plan your setup, save it, and let the variety meter tell you (after ten setups — not before) whether you have a habit an opponent could learn.
  • 🔏 Sealed setups. Both setups get a short seal at the start. At the end the app checks every strike against them. Nobody can rearrange an army mid-game.

Bluffing — moving a small piece as if it were big — is part of this game because both players agreed to it when they sat down. It is never a trick on a person.

The tacticians of Hollowmere

  • 🐻 Ursa (10) and 🐺 Lupa (9) — the two biggest; worth protecting.
  • 🐭 Puck — the smallest; the only one who can surprise Ursa.
  • 🌿 Briar — the bramble; never moves. 🦡 Burdock is the only one who clears her.
  • 🐇 Skipwell — runs far in straight lines, so moving far gives him away.
  • Pricetag spends a small piece to learn what a big one is. Decoy sits still and guarded, like a Moonstone, and isn’t one. Bluster walks a small piece like a big one.
  • Matchley knows equal pieces both go home. Fairwell stops endless chasing (three trips back and forth, then no more). Quillby keeps the Ledger honest. Draftsy runs the Blueprint studio.

Mosswick the owl asks: which of their pieces hasn’t moved — and what is that worth knowing?

More

  • 🤝 Play a friend — two screens and a room code. Each screen holds only its own army; at the end both setups are checked against the game.
  • ⚖️ Rules Lawyer — is this chase legal? Twelve fairness puzzles.
  • 🎧 Forty Stories — forty short audio dramas, one for every piece in the army, each told by the piece itself.
  • 👀 No Tells — can a screen give a secret away? Spot the scout on a careless screen, then on a fair one.
  • 🖨️ Print & play — a board and fold-up cards to play at a table; one side square, one side round.
  • 🌙 HollowPals — the eight-piece version for younger players (ages 6–8).

Everything runs on your device — no accounts, no timer, no leaderboard. A brief history: a French designer drew a game like this in 1908; it has been played in many forms since.

BluffForge mascot

Meet the cast — the characters who teach this

Each one stands for an idea you’ll practice. Tap a character to read their illustrated story and hear their audio drama.

Ensemble stories — the cast together

Explore all the stories →

What next? Pick a door

Chosen from what this app is about. What you open is remembered on this device only.