♣ Manhouse — Rules & FAQ

What is Manhouse?

A chess roguelike. One run is ten fights. Every fight the opponent starts with extra material and plays a little better than the last. Your edge is mana: it arrives every move and you spend it to summon pieces onto any empty square.

How do I actually win a fight?

Checkmate the opponent, like normal chess. You are not trying to win on material — you are trying to survive long enough that your mana stream out-produces their head start.

How does mana work?

You start each fight with a small amount and gain more on every move you make, up to a cap so it cannot be hoarded forever. Tap a piece in the buy row, then tap an empty square to summon it — any empty square on the board, either half, one piece per move. (The one exception is a pawn, which cannot be summoned onto rank 1 or 8, where it could never move.) Prices differ per piece — a pawn is cheap, a queen is not.

Mana never carries between fights. Each fight starts fresh from your economy, so a good economy means a good start every time, not a growing bank.

What happens to the pieces the opponent takes?

It keeps them. Every piece the opponent captures goes into its own pocket, shown as Opponent holds just above the board — and on any later turn it can put one of them straight back onto an empty square, anywhere on the board. That is theCrazyhouse rule, and here only your opponent plays by it.

So trading pieces no longer makes them weaker: a knight you win is a knight they can drop behind your lines three moves later. Two things follow. Capture when it wins you something, not out of habit — and watch that strip, because a queen in their hand changes which of your squares are safe.

You do not get a pocket. Your way of putting pieces on the board ismana — you buy exactly the piece you want, when you can afford it, instead of waiting to be given one. That is the trade at the heart of the game: they recycle, you purchase.

What are mutations?

After each cleared fight you draft one of three cards. Every card bends yourmana economy — never a random stat. The five families areSpring (the tap runs faster), Vault (you hold more before it spills),Bargain (everything costs less), Surge (mana arrives in bursts) andThrift (waste becomes value).

Hold two of a family for a bonus and three for a bigger one — so drafting is a real choice: spread wide, or commit to a build. Mutations last for the current run only.

Every card tells you exactly what it does, in numbers — "+1 mana per move (1 → 2)", "−3 mana cap (12 → 9)", "pawns 0 (was 1.5)" — one fact per line, with the before and after, so you never have to guess what "faster" or "cheaper" meant. The numbers are read from the game itself, so a card cannot say one thing and do another.

During a fight, Your mutations sits under the board and lists everything you are holding with those same numbers, so you can check mid-game what you picked. Drafting the same card twice stacks it and the row shows ×2.

Tap anything to have it explained. A card in the draft has aDetails › tap that spells out exactly what it does before you commit to it, and every chip in Your mutations is tappable mid-fight for the same plain-language explainer — so you never have to remember what a card you picked four fights ago is doing.

What are ♣ clubs?

Manhouse’s own currency, kept permanently and spent on artifacts. Each roguelike in this app has its own currency, so a change in one never re-prices another.

You earn ♣ two ways, and one of them does not depend on winning:2 ♣ for every fight you clear, plus 8 ♣ for finishing a run at all — win or lose. That second one is the point: a run that ends on fight two still moves you forward, so the upgrades are reachable while you are still learning rather than only once you are already winning.

Why do I start with no mana — and what are Fabs?

Manhouse is deliberately hard, and equally hard for everyone. There is one difficulty; it is not adjusted to your rating, because that would make it a different game for different players. You start a run with no mana against a strong opponent.

What you get instead is a dial you control: three rows of Fabs(fabricators) — Starting mana, Mana per move, Max mana — that fill up whether or not you are playing. Each row has one Fab per fight (10 of them), so what you bank is always banked for a particular fight.

Every Fab is a tank with two upgrades, bought with ♣: how much itholds, and how fast it fills. A fresh Mana Fab holds 3 manaand fills over 24 hours; fully upgraded it holds 8and fills in 10. A fully upgraded Max mana Fab raises that fight's ceiling to 24 mana. Later fights cost more to upgrade and hold no more — you pay more there because you need it more there, not because it is bigger.

The number on a Fab is the number the fight uses. Each row shows what that fight will actually open with — its starting mana, its mana per move, its mana ceiling — never a bonus on top of something hidden. A Fab also has a floor: even empty, it shows the real value, so reading the strip tells you the whole fight before you start it.

Fabs are spent when a run begins, and they refill from empty. Waiting longer than a full tank banks nothing extra — a full Fab is a floor under a returning player, not a reward for staying away. Your first visit is different on purpose: your Mana Fabs start full at a rescue level, so a brand-new player's first run is winnable.

What are artifacts?

Permanent upgrades bought with ♣ on the Manhouse home screen. Unlike mutations they survive between runs: more starting mana, a bigger cap, extra ♣ per fight, a wider draft, a reroll, or one forgiven loss per run. They are deliberately modest — an artifact buys reach, never a free win, and no stack of them can push your economy past what a fully-drafted run could reach anyway.

Some artifacts have several ranks; each rank costs more ♣ than the last. A steady player reaches their first artifact within a few runs.

What are levels?

The endless ladder. Winning a run unlocks the next level, where the opponent owns a little more and plays a step stronger — a step sized so that getting better actually moves you up it, rather than a jump you cannot train for. Later rungs are still meant to be conquered with the artifacts and sharper drafting you accumulate, not on the first try. Every level is listed on the home screen — the ones you have unlocked, plus the next few locked ones showing the opponent strength waiting there. Material stops growing after the early levels and pure playing strength carries the ladder from then on.

What happens when I lose?

The run ends and your mutations are gone — that is the roguelike bargain. Your banked ♣ stays. Start a fresh run whenever you like; leaving mid-run keeps your place.

Can I move while the opponent is thinking?

Yes — that is a premove. While the opponent thinks, play your move normally and it is queued instead: a green arrow shows it, and it plays the instant your turn comes round. Mana matters here, because you earn it on your move — moving the moment your turn opens is the fastest the economy can run.

You can queue up to five in a row, not just one. Each is drawn as an arrow — the next one green, the rest blue — and they play in order, one per turn. A sixth premove starts a fresh chain.

If the opponent does something that makes your queued move illegal, thewhole chain is dropped — the rest of it was planned against a position that never happened, so playing it on would be worse than dropping it.

To delete a queued premove: tap any empty square (or an enemy piece) while you are still waiting, or right-click anywhere on the board. Tapping one of your own pieces does not delete — it starts a new premove instead.

Two things you cannot premove: summoning a piece from the buy row (its price is charged when it lands, so a queued summon could turn out to be unaffordable), and the promotion piece — a premoved pawn reaching the last rank still stops and asks you which piece you want.

Can I give up on a fight?

Yes. Resign stage sits under the board. It asks once — tap it again to confirm — and then the stage counts as a loss, exactly as if you had been checkmated: your ♣ still settle, and the run moves on or ends.

Meet your opponents

Every fight is against one of the same 7 bots the rest of the app uses, from the weakest to the strongest — the rung decides which one you face and how much material it starts with.

Q. Who are the seven bots?

One shared cast plays across every game — seven bots from ♙ Mousebot (500) up to ♚ Kingbot (3200). Strength is the only difference — no bot has a playing style, only a level of play (and a personality to match).