The Royal Game of Ur
Rescuing a Lost Flash Game
June 11, 2025
The Royal Game of Ur has always fascinated me. I grew up playing it with my dad, and he is the one who bought me a reproduction board from the British Museum when I was younger. Years later, I wanted to play against a bot, and in 2017, I found a 2006-era browser version on a sketchy site. Copies of this flash game were nowhere else to be seen, especially on the British Museum’s own pages, which felt like a shame because it is a surprisingly well-made little game, even if the computer logic is basic. I decided to host it here so anyone can play without pop-ups or malware vibes. Since Flash is discontinued, I run it through an emulator for modern browsers. I also provide a direct download of the original SWF for posterity. In a way, it feels somewhat ironic that the Flash version itself was disappearing into obscurity, just like the ancient original game once did, only to be rediscovered and preserved again thousands of years later.
What is the Royal Game of Ur?
Ur is a two-player race game from ancient Mesopotamia. Players move their pieces along a shared track, try to land on rosette squares for bonuses, and aim to bear off all their pieces first. Boards discovered at the Royal Cemetery of Ur date to around the third millennium BC, and modern rules most people use were pieced together by British Museum curator Irving Finkel from cuneiform sources. Think of something with the tempo of backgammon where luck and position interplay on a compact board.
Why am I hosting this Flash version?
By the time I found the museum’s old Flash game, it was marooned behind ads, and it felt like it could vanish for good. Flash support ended in browsers, so the only way to keep it playable was to emulate it using Ruffle. The emulator and game are embedded below, but I also set up a simple page that loads the original SWF with a modern emulator, which preserves the look and feel of the original while making it easy to try the game before you invest in a physical set or print one at home.
If the emulator above is not working, you can try playing it directly from its own webpage, where I host it, or you can download the .swf file.
If you want your own board, the British Museum sells handsome reproductions, including a full-size set and a smaller budget set, both inspired by the famous boards in their collection. If you are just curious, there are reputable print-and-play PDFs that you can download and try with coins or pebbles as pieces. These options make it easy to go from a browser session to a game on your table.
Other Ways to Play
Buy a board from the British Museum:
- Full-size set: The Royal Game of Ur Board Game. (This is the one I have, and it is far too expensive if you ask me)
- Small set: Game of Ur Board Game, Small.
Print and play:
- Getty Museum printable board and rules (PDF).
Learn More
Wikipedia: Royal Game of Ur
Youtube: Irving Finkel and Tom Scott explain and play the game
