Liubo - 六博
A downloadable game for Windows
We are Liubo Lab!
Liubo is an ancient Chinese board game originally played from about 500 BCE to 500 CE. The rules of the game have been lost to time, but our team is attempting to reconstruct the game based on what we do know.
Liubo is a game about birds catching fish. Each player controls 6 pieces representing birds. These birds fly around the board in order to reach the center square, which represents a pond full of fish. Birds catch fish and turn into owls by crossing over or landing on this pond, and then score points by dropping the fish in the circle “Nest” spaces on the opponent’s side of the board. However, you can also score points by capturing your opponent’s birds/owls before they reach the nests! Liubo takes between 10 to 45 minutes to play; the first player to 6 points wins!
Please check out our project website for more details!
https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/liubo-lab/
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I can't seem to rate the game or write a review, so I'll post what I said here:
I've been curious about Liubo for about 20 years. I have no idea if this version is like what was actually played 2000 years ago, but it's a beautiful and playable game with a sweet theme. I downloaded the video version, but I also printed up a board from wikipedia and used some Mah Jongg pieces to play it on my table. The rules give more options each turn than the similar ancient games Yut and Pachisi, so it's more fun to play. I love the theme of birds in a garden in a forest, catching fish in a pond.
I hope the developers will consider making a print-and-play version of the board, at least, since it's so beautiful.
I would love to find out more about how much of this reflects the 2019 find of the written rules on bamboo slips found in a tomb. I tried the contact link on their webside, but it doesn't seem to be working.
Hi Karen! I am the CMU professor who pitched and advised the project, so I'm happy to answer your questions about it. The team members have all graduated from our Masters' program now, so I don't know if they are still following this page.
Unfortunately, only limited excerpts from the newly discovered Liubo bamboo texts have been released so far. Reportedly, the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun (Haihun Hou) -- who was the Han Emperor for a few dozen days, before being deposed -- contains extensive texts on Liubo, but they were misidentified at first (as being about something else) and have not yet been published. So the team did a bunch of research about the new texts, as well as other texts, but ultimately was not able to make as full use of them as we hoped.
If you're interested in their process of recreating the game, they discuss it in this presentation they gave for Generation Analog (an annual online conference run by the journal Analog Game Studies):
https://youtu.be/tuTYT8r6KoA?feature=shared&t=1099
So exciting!