Twenty Squares — The Royal Game of Ur
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Twenty Squares — The Royal Game of Ur
An echo of the past you can actually play.
In 1928, archaeologists digging the Royal Cemetery of Ur (c. 2600–2400 BC) found a board of shell, lapis and red limestone. Nobody knew how it was played — until British Museum curator Irving Finkel deciphered a Babylonian rules tablet from 177 BC. This mod rebuilds that 4,600-year-old game as a complete, playable Minecraft system: craft the board, sit down, and play.
How to play
- Craft the board — lapis, a nautilus shell, planks and red sandstone (the shell, lapis and red limestone of the real artifact)
- Place it and right-click. Play vs the Spirits (AI), Join with a friend on any client, or hotseat solo
- Roll the four tetrahedral dice, then click a glowing piece. Race all 7 of your pieces around the twenty squares and bear them off — first to finish wins
The rules are Finkel's reconstruction: 7 pieces each, captures on the 8 shared middle squares, rosettes that grant an extra roll and shelter from capture, and an exact roll required to bear off.
The omens
The Babylonians treated the game as fortune-telling, and the rules tablet attaches an omen to the marked squares. Land on a rosette and the tablet's words come true:
| Omen | Effect |
|---|---|
| "You will become powerful like a lion." | Strength |
| "You will draw fine beer." | A drinkable Fine Beer item |
| "You will find a true friend." | Luck |
| "You will stand in exalted places." | Absorption |
| "May your herds prosper." | Saturation + experience |
Two games, one board
Real ancient game boxes carried Senet on the reverse side — so does this one. Sneak-right-click to flip the board: 30 squares, casting sticks, swap-captures, defended pieces, and the dreaded House of Water that sweeps your piece back.
Details
- Multiplayer: seat-based, server-authoritative — two players, one board
- Solo: hotseat mode, or a heuristic AI opponent that captures, defends and races
- In-world rendering: pieces stand on the block in 3D — no GUI needed to watch a match
- Presentation: dice, trays and move highlights in the GUI; sounds and particles for every roll, capture, rosette and victory
- Persistent: matches survive save & reload
- Modpack-friendly: single self-contained mechanic, no worldgen, no dependencies beyond Fabric API
Made for CurseForge ModJam 2026 — "Echoes of the Past". Source on GitHub (see the Issues/Source links). MIT licensed.
The Twenty Squares — The Royal Game of Ur Team
