About Play Online Ludo

PlayOnlineLudo.com is a free, browser-based Ludo game. There is nothing to download and no account to create, open the page, pick a match type, and play.

The Game

Standard Ludo on the standard board. Each player has four tokens and a fifty-two square track to travel. You need a 6 to bring a token out of your yard, and an exact roll to bring one home. The first player to get all four tokens home wins. That is identical whether you are playing the computer or a real person.

Landing on an opponent sends their token back to its yard, except on the eight safe squares, the four coloured starting squares and the four marked with a star. A six, a capture and a token reaching home each earn another roll, but three sixes in a row forfeits the turn.

Two tokens may share a square, and there is no blocking rule: opponents can always move past a stack rather than being trapped behind it. That is a deliberate choice, blocking makes casual games drag and is the rule most often dropped in online Ludo.

Playing the Computer

There are three difficulty levels:

• Easy, takes an obvious capture, but otherwise moves more or less at random.
• Normal, weighs every option and plays a solid, sensible game.
• Hard, counts the squares behind each of your tokens and will break up a run of its own to send one of yours back to the yard.

Higher difficulties do not cheat. The computer rolls the same dice you do and is bound by exactly the same rules, it simply evaluates its options more carefully. In our own testing Hard beats Easy about 90% of the time and Normal about 70%.

Playing Online

Choosing Play Online puts you into a matchmaking queue. The screen shows "Finding an opponent" and keeps waiting until another player is also queued, at which point you are both dropped straight into a live match.

Online games run on a real-time connection provided by Ably. One player's browser acts as referee: it rolls the dice, validates every move against the rules and shares the result, which is what keeps the board identical on both screens. Because Ludo is turn-based, that is a couple of small messages per turn rather than a constant stream. If your opponent disconnects mid-game, the game ends and the win is awarded to you.

Devices

The game works in any modern browser on desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. Touch controls are enabled automatically on touchscreens, and the board scales to fit whatever screen it's on. Portrait orientation works well on phones, the board is square, so it fits comfortably.

Contact

Questions, bug reports or feedback: support@velovid.net