The History of Ludo: From Pachisi to Online Play

With its tidy square board and four bright colours, Ludo looks like a thoroughly British family game. Its story starts thousands of miles away. Almost every element of the game, from the cross-shaped track to the dash for home, comes from Pachisi, a game played across India for centuries before a simplified version was patented in England in the 1890s. This is how a pastime of royal courts became a fixture of family homes, and eventually of phones and browsers everywhere.

Pachisi, the game of twenty-five

Pachisi takes its name from the Hindi word pachis, meaning twenty-five, which was the highest score a player could throw. Instead of a die, players tossed a handful of cowrie shells, usually six or seven, and counted how many landed with their openings facing up. The board was typically a cross-shaped piece of cloth, often richly embroidered, which could be folded away after the game. Pachisi was commonly played by four people in two partnerships.

Nobody knows exactly when Pachisi began, but by the time of the Mughal emperors it was firmly established across the Indian subcontinent, and it is often described as India’s national game. A close relative, Chaupar (also spelled Chausar), used long stick-shaped dice instead of shells and was just as popular among the nobility.

A game fit for an emperor

The most famous story about Pachisi involves the Mughal emperor Akbar, who ruled from 1556 to 1605. At Fatehpur Sikri, the city he built near Agra, one courtyard is laid out as a giant Pachisi board. According to the popular account, Akbar played there with people standing in for the pieces, moving across the squares as the shells were thrown. Whether or not every detail of the story is true, the courtyard survives, and it shows how highly the game was regarded at the imperial court.

From Pachisi to Ludo

Pachisi reached Britain in the nineteenth century, carried home by people who had lived and served in colonial India. Versions of the game were sold under several names, but the one that stuck was Ludo, Latin for “I play”. A simplified version was patented in England under that name in the 1890s. Most accounts credit Alfred Collier and date the patent to 1896.

The changes were practical ones, aimed at family play. A single cubic die replaced the cowrie shells. The cloth cross became a printed square board with a coloured yard in each corner. The rules were trimmed so that children could learn them in minutes. Every Ludo board you will find today still carries those choices.

Ludo also went to sea. Sailors in the Royal Navy adopted it and turned it into Uckers, a fiercely competitive version with extra rules and its own vocabulary, which has been passed down through generations of crews.

One game, many names

Ludo was not the only descendant of Pachisi. Around the same time, the game was being adapted in other countries, each version picking up its own name and quirks:

• United States. An adaptation of Pachisi appeared in the 1860s and was trademarked as Parcheesiin 1874. It stayed closer to the original than Ludo did, using two dice and rewarding captures with bonus moves, and Selchow & Righter sold it for generations.
• Germany. Josef Friedrich Schmidt devised Mensch ärgere Dich nicht (“Man, don’t get angry”) in 1907–08. Published in 1914, it went on to sell tens of millions of copies and gave its creator’s name to the publisher Schmidt Spiele.
• England, again. In 1929 William Henry Storey registered Sorry! as a trademark: a Ludo-style race that used a deck of cards instead of a die. Parker Brothers brought it to the United States in 1934.
• Everywhere else. From Spain’s Parchís to Sweden’s Fia, dozens of national versions grew up over the twentieth century. Our guide to Ludo variations around the world covers the best known.

Why Ludo has lasted

Plenty of nineteenth-century parlour games are forgotten now. Ludo is still everywhere, and it is not hard to see why:

• It is easy to learn. The rules fit on a single page, and young children can play alongside grandparents.
• Luck keeps it open. Anyone can win any game, so experienced players can’t dominate and newcomers are never shut out.
• Choices keep it interesting. Deciding which token to move, when to capture and when to hide gives every player something to think about on each roll.
• It is social. Ludo is built for two to four people around one board, with plenty of moments to celebrate, groan and plot revenge.
• It is cheap and portable. A board, sixteen tokens and a die are all it takes.

Ludo goes online

Ludo moved onto screens almost as soon as screens arrived, first as simple computer versions and later as apps. Smartphones changed the scale completely. In the late 2010s, mobile Ludo became hugely popular, especially in South Asia, and during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 online Ludo gave many families and friends a way to keep playing together while they were apart.

Playing online also solves problems that tabletop players have always had. Nobody at the table can fudge a roll or quietly move a token an extra square, a timer keeps slow players moving, and you no longer need everyone in the same room. Thunder Ludo is part of that latest chapter: the same race that was played on embroidered cloth and Victorian boards, now in a browser tab. If you are new to it, start with How to Play Ludo.

Timeline