Play Fox and Geese Online for Free
One sly fox sits dead center of a cross-shaped board while thirteen geese mass along the top, and from that first move the hunt is on. You pick a side: as the fox you slip between the flock and snap up geese with checkers-style jumps, thinning the herd until too few remain to corner you. As the geese you can never capture a thing — your only weapon is the slow, suffocating wall you build to pin the fox until it has nowhere left to step. It is short, sharp, and ruthlessly asymmetric.
How to Play Fox and Geese
Fox and Geese is played on a cross-shaped (plus-shaped) board: a 7x7 grid where only the central rows and central columns are in play, giving 33 connected points. Thirteen geese start packed across the top three rows of the cross, and the single fox starts on the very center point. The geese always move first, then play alternates. Pieces slide one step at a time along the marked lines to an empty neighboring point — and not every point has the same connections: only points on the alternating 'diagonal' intersections allow diagonal moves, while the others are limited to up, down, left, and right.
The geese can never capture. Each goose may step forward (toward the fox's side of the board), sideways, or diagonally forward when a diagonal line is present, but a goose can never move backward or retreat. Their whole job is to advance as a tight formation and box the fox in. The geese win the instant it is the fox's turn and the fox has no legal move left — surrounded on every line with no empty point to slide to and no goose it can jump.
The fox moves one step in any direction its point allows, and it captures exactly like checkers: jump over a goose that sits on an adjacent point, landing on the empty point directly beyond, and that goose is removed. Captures are optional, not forced. After a capture the fox may jump again from the point where it landed, chaining captures one after another for as long as jumps are available, or stop whenever it chooses by tapping the fox where it landed; it never adds an ordinary step to a capture. The fox wins by eating geese down below four (three or fewer remaining), at which point the flock can no longer build a trapping wall. The fox also wins if the geese, on their turn, have no legal move. If instead the fox ends a turn on a row above every goose, having slipped past the whole flock, the game is a draw: geese never move backward, so they could never trap it again.
Hunting and Herding: Tactics for Both Sides
Geese must advance as an unbroken wall, never a single scout. The cruelest mistake is pushing one goose ahead of its neighbors, because the fox lands beside it, jumps, and lands on the empty point behind — a free meal. Keep every advancing goose backed by another goose one step behind it on the same line, so that even if the fox jumps the front goose, the landing square is occupied. Because geese can never move backward, plan each push carefully: a goose shoved too far forward and out of formation is committed and cannot be pulled back to plug the hole it left.
The geese should herd the fox toward an arm of the cross, not the open center. The four narrow arms have fewer escape lines, and the dead-end points at the tips of the cross are the natural killing ground. Drive the fox up one arm by filling the points behind and beside it, then collapse the last open line. Remember the engine's win check: you do not need to capture anything — you simply need a position where, on the fox's turn, every neighboring point is blocked and no goose is jumpable.
As the fox, mobility is survival, so loiter near the center where the most lines meet and avoid being shepherded into a corner or arm tip with only one or two exits. Do not grab every capture on offer — captures are optional, and a greedy jump that lands you deep among the geese or up a dead-end arm can hand the geese a free turn to wall you in. Count first: a jump is only safe if your landing point still gives you escape squares afterward.
The fox's secret weapon is the multiple capture. Look for setups where one jump leads to a second jump along a chain of loosely guarded geese — a multi-capture can rip three or four geese out of the formation in a single turn and crack the wall wide open. Every further jump is optional, so check where each one leaves you: stopping on a point with escape lines can be worth more than one more goose that drops you into a dead-end arm.
Against the computer, every level uses the same evaluation and thinks for a limited time: Easy picks at random among its four best moves, Medium between its two best, and Hard always plays the best move it finds, whichever side it has.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many geese are there and what counts as a fox win?
The game starts with 13 geese clustered on the top three rows of the cross and one fox in the center. The fox wins the moment the flock drops below four geese — that is, when only three or fewer remain — because at that point the geese can no longer assemble enough of a wall to trap it. The fox also wins if the geese, on their turn, have no legal move.
Can the geese capture or jump the fox?
No. Geese never capture anything in this version. Their only path to victory is positional: advance and surround the fox until, on the fox's turn, it has no empty point to step to and no goose it can legally jump. The fox is the only piece on the board that can remove pieces.
Why can't my goose move backward or jump like the fox?
Geese are deliberately restricted to moving forward, sideways, or diagonally forward, and they can never retreat or capture. That asymmetry is the whole game: the fox is fast and deadly but alone, while the geese are slow, one-directional, and harmless individually but overwhelming as a coordinated mass.
Are diagonal moves always allowed?
No — diagonals only exist on certain points. The board alternates: roughly half the intersections have diagonal lines and half don't. On a point with diagonals, both the fox and a goose (moving diagonally forward) can use them; on a point without, moves are limited to up, down, left, and right. This patterning is why the fox can suddenly find an escape line you didn't expect.
Does the fox have to take a capture if one is available, and can it chain jumps?
Captures are always optional — the fox may decline a jump and make an ordinary step instead. After a capture, the fox may keep jumping from the point where it landed, one jump after another, ripping several geese out in one turn. Each further jump is optional too: tap the fox to end the turn, and the turn ends by itself when no jump is left. A turn that starts with a capture never finishes with an ordinary step.
Can Fox and Geese end in a draw?
Yes, in one case. Geese never move backward, so once the fox ends a turn on a row above every goose, having slipped past the whole flock, the geese can never trap it again; the game is scored a draw at that moment instead of being played out. The fox can still win before that by capturing, and the geese still win by trapping a fox that stays among them. The traditional rules have no such clause, and a game between two careful players could go on indefinitely, so our online version adopts the draw that computer versions use.