Most people who want online board games with friends do not want something new. A free board game they already know is an easy sell for a family game night. They want the game their family already knows, moved onto a screen so that a cousin in another city can sit at the same table. Three old games make that move well: a race, a climb and a trading game. I build browser versions of all three, so I can tell you what each one is and what changes when it leaves the cardboard.
What counts as a classic?
A classic is a game whose rules fit in a few sentences and have survived long enough that nobody argues about who invented them. Boards of this kind are very old. The Royal Game of Ur dates to roughly 2600 to 2400 BC, and the earliest picture of Senet is around 2620 BCE. Our current favourites are younger, but they borrow the same idea: a track, a throw of something, and a little malice.
Ludo: the race with a grudge
Ludo was marketed in England in 1896 by Alfred Collier, who patented it as Royal Ludo. Its cousins include the German Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, first put on sale in 1910, and the Spanish Parchís. All of them descend from Pachisi.
On a screen the rules are enforced for you, which removes the usual kitchen-table dispute about whether a move was legal. The board has fifty-two squares, eight of them safe, so about one square in six cannot be attacked. A piece needs fifty-six steps from its door to home and must land on home exactly. Up to four people can play, and a game lasts from half an hour to an hour. The host can pick a Quick version with two pieces each, which runs about five minutes.
Snakes and Ladders: the climb nobody controls
Snakes and Ladders began in India as Moksha Patam, at least as far back as the second century CE, and was meant to teach virtues and vices. Victorian officers brought it to England, and F. H. Ayres published an English edition in October 1892.
My board has a hundred squares, with nine ladders to climb and ten snakes to slide down. There is no strategy, which is exactly why a child and a grandparent can share a table. Two to eight people can play, and a game lasts somewhere between ten and twenty-five minutes. The host can change the board to a ladder-heavy or snake-heavy layout, and can add a first-to-three match if one game is not enough.
A trading game: land, rent and a changed mind
Elizabeth Magie designed The Landlord's Game in 1902 and 1903, and received a US patent in 1904. She meant it to show how rent enriches landowners. People kept changing its rules afterwards, and the trading game most people know grew out of that long process.
My own version is Property Rush, which puts twenty-two cities from eight countries on the board. There are twenty-eight things to buy, including airports and utilities. Nothing stops the game at a set point: it carries on until a single player still has money. The host chooses the starting purse, anywhere between $500 and $5,000, and a smaller purse makes a shorter game. Two to six people can play.
What changes when a board game moves into a browser?
Four things change, in my experience of building them.
The rules enforce themselves. Nobody gets to miscount a square.
A clock replaces patience. The race and the climb both give thirty seconds a turn, so a slow thinker cannot hold up the table.
A seat can be filled. In these three games the host can fill empty seats with computer-played players, and one steps in if a person misses two turns running.
The table is private. Friends join through a short code or a shared link, and a typed name is all a guest provides.
Which classic should you try first?
Pick by who is coming. If there is a small child at the table, Snakes and Ladders. For four people who like a fight, Ludo. For three friends who have an evening free, the property game. All three live together on Boardit, so a table can move from one to the next with no download for anyone.
A word about the code
Whoever holds a table's code can sit down at it. Share it with the people you invited and nobody else, and keep it out of public chats.
Why the old boards still work
These games survived because the rules are short and the stories are long. A good game of Ludo ends with someone telling the table how close they came. That is the real reason to play a classic online: the board is only the excuse for the evening.
Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.