Design Document

Ok, so pretty much everything about the game can be found in earlier blog posts, the design document is for the final iteration of The Royal Game of Ur described in the Tweaking Ancient Games post. One of the focii for this document was the aesthetics of the game.

For the board, I decided that I would stick with the original aesthetics, only the board shape would be changed, to keep it close to its Mesopotamian roots. However, I decided that instead counters the game should be played with figurines, since despite still being a race game there was a strong battle element to it.

So, having researched the armour of the time, considering the Mesopotamian Empire had the first standing army, the colour scheme consists of brown and bronze.

The soldiers of the time, and therefore the figurines, would wear bronze caps with leather lining on the inside.


They would have worn full body leather cloaks with shield like bronze stitched into it. Unfortunately I was unable to find any pictures to illustrate this.

Their feet would most likely have been visible, but would have been covered in leather footwraps, also brown.

The gameplay was slower, which I preferred, and contained a mix of strategy and chance, which I also prefer to purely strategy or purely chance games. I think the aesthetics would show its roots well and not detract from the fact that its base mechanic describes it as a race game.