Senet (AG‪)‬ 4+

Excellent game!

I absolutely love this game, I learned about it after being curious what the oldest game is and Senet would be it, I wanted to try it out but most apps cost money where as this one is free, but it looks great and plays great! I tried the multiplayer (that’ll be in an update) and it worked amazing too! (Played with my Grandma) I’ve had no glitches whatsoever or any problems, the graphics are good and the boards you get from winning are cool, honestly for a free game it’s solid, and when I checked the “how to play” it matched with the original! This is a very authentic and enjoyable experience and I plan to check out other apps by this author! If you’re looking for a simple but good digital board game to play, this is for you! I am honestly impressed with how well this game is made for being free. I also got in contact with the developer when I couldn’t get the multiplayer to work, which he informed me would be in the next update but would manually do so for me, and he was very kind and very helpful! 100% I recommended this app. Great game, I’m impressed.

Well done...but aiming for several markets

Myself? Strict historicist. I’m in my mid 60s, and made my first SNT and Royal Game of Ur boards when I was in my teens (and still have them): they were as close as I could come to reproducing the originals. Mostly, I played the games “against myself,” as there weren’t too many other folks interested. The arrival of good computerized versions was a Godsend. In terms of historicity of game board, pieces, and feel...this is by far the best yet. Congratulations! The play is excellent as well (my only quibble being the rather long wait to throw the dice, which is not adjustable, as is the speed of the movement of pieces). But for an old history freak like myself, all the Gamer-geek paraphernalia built in (campaigns, loot boxes, quests, and on and on) seems like it’s from another universe. It is, rather. I can understand trying to appeal to a [much] larger potential market...but for those of us for whom this is a distraction at best...I’d pay to make it go away, and just have the board(s) of my choice and the good gameplay. Excellent work, and someone’s done their homework.

Developer Response ,

Physical boards will always be leagues better than anything digital, this is true. Sadly they don't come with included adversaries. I am glad you enjoy my adaptation of these games. I am working on making 3d printing versions of my boards. They will be available for purchase once the quality is good enough of course, but I mostly want to be able to play on them myself ahah.
I have answered the rest of your review on the Royal Game of Ur page.

Unresponsive controls(edit: fixed!)

I have played Senet with a real board, but often I find legal moves can't be done. Sometimes the game says "You can't do that" when it's a clearly illegal move, but often I try to legally move a piece and nothing appears. This only happens on the last row. The Egyptian ambience is nice but I can't recommend without a bug fix.

Edit: Thanks for dev response. I now believe the issue is the rules of Senet in this app are different than the rules I learned in my board. To be fair, resurrecting an ancient game involves a bit of guesswork so I don't view either interpretation as right or wrong. Regardless, I no longer believe there are any bugs, so I'm updating to 5-stars.

Developer Response ,

Hi,
As far as I am aware, no bug is currently affecting legal moves but I can be wrong. I'll investigate.

The last row has different rules than the rest of the board : in order to reach the final squares, a pawn needs to first stop on square 26 (the one with the three long hieroglyphs) so if you are on sq25 and throw a 3, you can't move for example.

For bug reports, it is better to use the in-game report button or send me an email directly (sullivan.bousiniere@gmail.com) so more information can be gathered to help fix whatever needs fixing.

Edit : Glad this wasn't a bug ;) Indeed, several rulesets exists for most ancient games since original rules are often lost or incomplete. I chose this one because it is the one I played, no other reasons, I am sure the other ones are just as good.