Ancient Games - The Royal Game of Ur

Its amazing to think for thousands of years, games have been played across the world in so many different cultures. Some are still played today while others are forgotten. Games such as The Royal Game of Ur, The Viking Game and The Stanway Game all have an antiquity value to them and are important to historical games. From excavation sites that have discovered old games, it was thought that the oldest types of games were racing but we now know that war games and Mancala games were actually created far later.

For one of my modules on the course we were asked to iterate the Royal Game of Ur, changing the mechanics of the game to create some better dynamics for the player to experience and hopefully enjoy more than the original. No one actually knows entirely what the rules are but some have taken an educated guess. You can find the rules at (http://www.mastersgames.com/rules/royal-ur-rules.htm)  I went the British Museum which you can read about on one of my previous posts and we actually got to see the fake original. 

I found when playing this game the player didn't have to think very much only when their pieces were in the 'attacking zone' which its referred to as, which is the centre spaces for both players have to move down. I wanted to change it so the player had more threat and conflict. So instead of the pieces finishing at the end the rules are now to line all your 5 pieces to the end of the board. these pieces can then also come back into the game because it is a fight for the last two spaces. We had to create a Design Document to show our iterations and how the board will look.

This is a good example of how someone might use the rosette square as a tactical advantage. This counter can stay there safely and can pounce on an opponent if need be. This might need to be iterated further because I don’t want players to start ‘goal hanging’, so there may need to be a rule that prevents them from staying on any rosette square for more than, say 3 turns. It is however quite difficult to get on one in the first place because of the exact number of moves the player needs to use.

The Player might use Counter X to attempt to knock out their opponent’s Counter Y, but this could be a sacrifice because it would only take a role of 2 moves for Counter Z. This also means that that counter would have to get back in the queue, when those moves may be better off moving counters that are closer to the start, and saving Counter X for the last two of the opponent’s counters. So calculating the best way of defence in the second conflict zone is quite important in winning the game.


Overall I think the game is slightly more enjoyable and create more tension for the player which is what I think ultimately drives this game.