4-Player Ludo

Ludo is at its best with a full board. Four players, four colours and sixteen tokens all racing around the same fifty-two square track, with far more chances to send someone back to their yard than a two-player game ever offers.

How the Four-Player Board Works

Each player takes a corner, red, green, yellow and blue, with four tokens waiting in their yard. Turns pass clockwise. You need a 6 to bring a token onto your coloured starting square, then it travels a full lap of the track before turning up into your own home column.

The home column is private: once a token turns into it, nobody can touch it. Everything before that is shared ground, and the eight safe squares are the only places on the track where a token cannot be captured.

Why Four Players Changes the Game

With two players you are watching one opponent. With four, three separate colours are moving between your turns, and the square that looked safe when you left it may have two tokens sitting six steps behind it by the time you come back around.

It also changes what winning means. The first player home wins, but the others keep playing for second and third, so a game rarely ends the moment someone finishes.

Playing Online or Against Bots

Choose 4P Online to be matched with other people, or 4P vs Bots to play three computer opponents straight away.

In the online version you never wait forever for a full board. If four people are not queued within a few seconds, bots take the empty seats and the game starts anyway, three friends get a proper four-colour game rather than staring at a waiting screen for a stranger who never arrives.

How Long Does a Four-Player Game Take?

Longer than you might expect: an average four-player game runs to roughly 580 dice rolls between the four seats. Here that works out at around ten minutes, which is in line with the rest of the genre. A two-player game is closer to three.

New to the game? Read the full Ludo rules, or just start playing, every rule is enforced for you, so there is nothing to memorise first.