Ludo feels like a modern family game, but its roots go back more than a thousand years to India.
Pachisi was played on a cross-shaped cloth board, using cowrie shells instead of dice. Stories say Mughal emperors played it in courtyards with living people as the pieces. The name comes from the Hindi word for twenty-five, the highest throw possible with the shells.
In the 1800s, British visitors brought the game home and simplified it. A cube die replaced the shells, the board was made smaller, and in 1896 a version was patented under the name Ludo, Latin for "I play".
The same basic game appears under many names, including Parcheesi in the United States, Mensch ärgere Dich nicht in Germany and Fia in Sweden. Each country tweaked the rules, but the idea of racing four tokens around a board survived everywhere.
Today the game lives on phones and browsers as well as on cardboard boards. A website version like this one keeps the same rules, but removes the need to find a board, a die and three other people in one room.