Number of players: 2+
Type of game: Dice
Period: 1552

Liar’s Dice is a classic bluffing and deduction game played with dice hidden beneath cups. Each player must guess how many dice showing a certain face value are present across all players’ cups—but without knowing anyone else’s dice. Players bluff, challenge, and try to outwit each other to be the last one with dice remaining.

History of Liar’s Dice

• Origins: Likely derived from Perudo or Dudo, a South American game with Incan roots.

• Global Spread: Popularised among sailors and gamblers; modern versions are common in pubs and game collections.

• Variants: Known by many names: Pirate’s Dice, Dudo, Perudo, and sometimes Bluff.

• Pop Culture: Featured in films like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

Number of players: 5 originally. Optional rules for 3,4 or 6
Type of game: Card
Period: 1500s

Laugh and Lie Down is a 16th-century English gambling game for five players using a standard 52-card deck. It’s a game of matching pairs and sets, with an early form of pool betting. Simple to learn but chaotic to play, it blends elements of chance, strategy, and social drama—perfect for taverns and long evenings.

Number of players: 4
Type of game: Cards (trick-avoiding)
Period: 1601 to 19th Century

Reversis is a four player card game where the aim is the reverse of most trick-taking games: instead of winning tricks, you try to avoid taking the high cards (Aces, Kings, Queens and Jacks). The most dangerous card of all is the Quinola, the Jack of Hearts. A player who is brave enough can turn the game upside down by winning every trick, which is called making the reversis. It is one of the ancestors of Hearts.

Number of players: 2-4 Type of game: Boardgame
Period:

Thayam is a traditional South Indian board game, especially popular in Tamil Nadu. It is a race game similar in concept to Pachisi or Ludo, involving strategy and chance, where players race their tokens around a track based on dice rolls.

History of Thayam

• Origins: Played in South India for centuries, with roots in traditional folk culture.

• Cultural Significance: Often played during festivals and family gatherings.

• Gameplay Similarity: Comparable to other Indian race games like Pachisi, but with local rule variations.

• Legacy: Continues to be popular in rural and urban areas as a social and competitive pastime.

Number of players: 2
Type of game: Boardgame
Period: 1550-1295 B.C.

Aseb also called The Game of Twenty Squares, Asseb, or Asib, Aseb is an ancient Egyptian board game, closely related to the Mesopotamian Royal Game of Ur. Aseb is a race-and-strategy game played on a rectangular board with twenty squares, blending luck, positioning, and blocking tactics.

History of Aseb

• Ancient Origins: Aseb emerged in ancient Egypt, likely adopted from the Mesopotamian Royal Game of Ur, dating back to at least 2600 BCE.

• Cross-Cultural Game: The game was transmitted across cultures through trade and conquest. By the New Kingdom (c. 1500 BCE), it had become widespread among Egyptians, played by royalty and commoners alike.

• Boards and Artefacts: Boards have been found in tombs and archaeological sites, often paired with Senet boards on opposite sides of a single game box.

• Evolution: While Senet was often religious or funerary in symbolism, Aseb remained more focused on tactical gameplay.

Number of players: 2
Type of game: Boardgame
Period: 2686 B.C. + Senet is one of the oldest known board games, originating in ancient Egypt around 3100 BCE. Played by pharaohs and commoners alike, Senet was both a pastime and a spiritual symbol, representing the soul’s journey through the afterlife. The game is a race of strategy and chance where players aim to move their pieces across a grid-shaped board and off the playing field first.

Number of players: 2
Type of game: Boardgame
Period: 2400BC+

The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest known board games in history, dating back over 4,500 years to ancient Mesopotamia. It is a two-player race and strategy game discovered in the Royal Tombs of Ur (modern-day Iraq) by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s. The game combines elements of chance and tactics as players race their pieces along a distinctive track to be the first to bear all their tokens off the board.

Number of players: 4 Type of game: Dice Period: 1283

El Mundo – Four Player Backgammon

History of El Mundo

El Mundo (lit. The World) aka Tables of the Four Seasons aka Four Player Backgammon is a tables game from the 13th century. This reconstruction is based off of the rules found in Alfonso X’s Book of Games (1283) as translated by Sonja Musser Golladay (2007).
The Book of Games is the only known description of how this game is played, and the only known reference to the game. Each colour in the game not only corresponds to a season but also one of the four elements and humours. Green represents spring, air, and blood; Red represents summer, fire, and choler; Black represents autumn, earth, and melancholy; White represents winter, water, and phlegm.

Number of players: 2
Type of game: Dice / Race
Period: Roman to 17th Century

Tables is not one game but a whole family of games, played on the same board with the same pieces and dice. Backgammon is the best known survivor, but for well over a thousand years people across Europe and the Middle East played dozens of different tables games, each with its own starting position and rules. Medieval players would simply say they were “playing at tables”, and then agree which game they meant.