Twenty Squares — The Royal Game of Ur

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

1. Craft the board — lapis, a nautilus shell, planks and red sandstone (the shell,
   lapis and red limestone of the real artifact)
2. Place it and right-click. Play vs the Spirits (AI), Join with a friend on
   any client, or hotseat solo
3. 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:

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.