Ancient Games- The Royal Game of Ur

Throughout  last September and November, we spent a generous amount of time studying historical and ancient games, one of which being The Royal Game of Ur. After studying and playing the game for a number of weeks, we were then given the task of making our own version of the game by tweaking and making various iterations of it.

My Iterative approach to The Royal Game of Ur:

When I first thought about iterating the game I found it difficult to know where to start. So in order to make the iterative process a little easier for myself, I decided to compile a list of what I thought the current version was lacking in terms of mechanics and game play. Here is the list I came up with:

Here is the list I came up with:

·         Player count is restricted to 2 players only
·         The level of user interactivity could be gravely improved
·         Limited risk vs reward factors
·         Games are relatively short
·     Lack of Betting/battering mechanics/alliances

After looking at what I thought was possibly lacking in the current version, I then began to take iterative approaches to make the new version include some of factors that I originally thought could be added.

The final flow of the game looked something like this:

After play testing the final iterated version of the game I had actually come to be pleasantly surprised by it's functionality. when The 4 players, the alliances and risk vs reward mechanics combined, I was worried it may have made the game too over complicated, but I enjoyed playing it and so to did it seem the players that play tasted it did as well.