Hane Board - Play Go Anywhere

Hane is a portable Go board with mechanical rotating stones that lets you play anywhere and continue games later without losing the position.

Each move is made by rotating an empty position towards yourself. Captures use the exact same movement, so taking stones becomes this really satisfying swipe across the board.

This project started because I learned to play Go with my best friend and carrying around a large board and bowls full of stones was a real hassle. I wanted something genuinely portable that still felt good to play on and didn’t send stones flying everywhere every time the board moved.

Current state of the project

Stone manufacturing has now been mostly streamlined and is fully scalable. The biggest bottleneck at the moment is still the 3D printed main structure. The final wooden CNC shells are currently being settled on, but no major changes to the board itself are expected.

Most of the development time ended up going into the clicking mechanism. Getting the right balance between tactile feel, smoothness and stability took a lot longer than expected, but I’m very happy with where it landed. The stones give a satisfying clack, stay firmly in place, and can still be rotated easily with one finger without pushing the board around.

The board also holds positions securely enough that you can throw an unfinished game into a backpack and continue it later.

Lisbon Go Open

A few weeks ago I brought a 9x9 prototype to Lisbon Go Open mostly just to get feedback and let people mess around with it a bit.

The response was honestly overwhelming. People kept flocking over to try rotating the stones and see how the mechanism worked. I got a lot of great feedback and, more importantly, got to see the board actually being used naturally.

What surprised me most was that it ended up being used less for full games and more for recreating positions from matches and discussing variations between rounds. Seeing people casually pass it around and analyze games on it was really cool.

Thanks to everyone there that tried it, gave feedback or encouraged me to keep pushing the project further.

Why Kickstarter

At the moment I can produce boards in small numbers myself, but scaling the process properly is difficult without better tooling.

The campaign is mainly meant to help fund the jump from handmade prototypes to a more refined production process: better molds, pressure casting equipment, CNC machining for the wooden shells, and generally making the boards more consistent and durable.

I still expect this to be a fairly small project and I want to keep improving things as feedback comes in, but enough people asked if they could actually buy one that I felt it was worth trying to make it real.