West Africa · Mandé

Kora Player

The kora is a twenty-one-string harp-lute of the Mandé griot traditions of Mali, Guinea, Senegal and the Gambia, played by hereditary musicians across centuries. This game borrows its shape for a rhythm exercise.

Played in: Mali · Guinea · Senegal · The Gambia

— The board

Play against the machine. Your best score is kept in this browser only — nothing is sent to the archive.

Click or tap to play. Keyboard works too where the game uses it.

— What is playing against you

Nothing plays against you — obstacles arrive on a timer.

No opponent — a timer or a spawner

Nothing is playing against you. There is no opponent in this game at all — no model of you, no plan, no choices being weighed. What feels like an adversary is a spawn timer and a random number generator: obstacles appear on a schedule that tightens as your score rises. This is worth noticing precisely because it can feel otherwise. Difficulty that rises with time reads as an opponent responding to you, and it is not.

Compare every opponent in the archive →

What this version is not

A real kora has twenty-one strings, a calabash resonator and a repertoire tied to specific lineages of jeli musicians. This has four strings and invented melodies. It is a rhythm game wearing a kora, not an introduction to the instrument or its repertoire.

— Sources

No sources have been attached to this entry yet. Until they are, treat everything above as provisional.

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The Archive · Play as Record Kora Player Africanpedia