Ludo — Free 2–4 Player Board Game Online

How to play Ludo

Choose 2, 3 or 4 seats, pick Quick (two tokens each) or Full (four tokens each), then set every seat to Human or Bot. A bot rolls and moves by itself after a short pause so you can see what happened; set every seat but one to Bot and you have a solo game against the computer. Press Start and every token lines up in its own yard.

On your turn, tap the dice. All four tokens begin locked in the yard and only a six unlocks one — a six lets you move a token from your yard onto your coloured start square. Once a token is on the track it advances clockwise by exactly the number you rolled. When more than one token could legally move, the ones you can move light up with a pulsing ring; tap a token to move it, or tap one of the move chips above the board, which name the same tokens and are sized for a thumb. If only one move is legal the game plays it for you rather than making you tap a forced choice.

Land on a square holding a single opponent token and you capture it: that token goes straight back to its owner's yard and has to start the whole lap again, and you get an extra roll for the trouble. Two things stop this. A safe square — your start square or one of the four stars — can never be the site of a capture, so rival tokens simply share it. And two tokens of the same colour sitting on one open square form a block that nobody else can land on.

After a full clockwise lap your token turns off the shared track into your own home column, which no other colour can touch. From there it needs an exact roll to reach the centre: if the number would carry it past home, that move is not offered at all. Rolling a six earns another roll, and so does a capture or getting a token home — but three sixes in a row forfeits the whole turn, and the third six is not played. The first seat to bring every one of its tokens into the centre wins.

Ludo strategy that actually works

• Spread out, then converge. Sitting on a single token is the most common beginner mistake. With one piece on the board every six you roll is wasted on a token you have already committed, and any capture resets your whole game. Two or three tokens out at once means a six is always useful and a single unlucky capture is survivable.
• Learn to count to six behind you. A token is in danger only from opponents one to six squares behind it on the track. Before you commit a move, glance backwards from the landing square: if a rival token sits within six of it and is still on the shared track, you are offering a capture. This is the single calculation that separates a good Ludo player from a lucky one — and it is exactly what the bots on this page do.
• Use the eight safe squares as stepping stones. The four start squares and the four stars are the only places a token cannot be taken. The first star is eight steps out from your own start, and the next safe square after that is another rival's start. Plan long moves so they finish on one of the eight rather than one short of it.
• The stretch just before your home column is the most dangerous on the board. By the time your token has gone forty-odd squares, three opponents have had forty turns to line up behind it, and a capture there costs an entire lap. If you can reach the entry square — the outer middle square of your own arm — in one move rather than resting two squares short of it, take it.
• Blocks are a weapon, not an accident. Parking two of your tokens on the same open square makes it untouchable and denies it to everyone else. Put a block on the square just in front of an opponent's start and you make their exit genuinely painful — but do not leave it there so long that both tokens fall behind the race.
• Hold one token back for the endgame. A token still in your home column is safe but useless; a token still on the track can punish a rival's last dash. When you are ahead, the tempting move is to run everything home. It is often stronger to leave one piece loitering six squares behind the leader's entry square.
• Exact rolls decide close games. With a token on the fourth of five home column squares you need exactly a 2. Roll a 5 and the move is simply illegal, and if nothing else can move the turn is gone. Stagger your tokens in the home column instead of stacking them at the same distance, so most rolls have somewhere to go.

Quick mode, and why it is the default

A full four-seat, four-token game of Ludo takes fifteen to thirty minutes, which is a long time to hand a phone around. Quick mode gives every seat two tokens instead of four and keeps every other rule — sixes, captures, blocks, stars, exact home rolls — completely intact. Games usually land between five and ten minutes, which is about the length of a coffee break, so it is the default here. Switch to Full at setup for the proper thing.

The fitness twist

This version adds one small thing the cardboard board cannot: when a human player captures an opponent or gets a token home, the game suggests a one-line micro-challenge — ten squats for the capture, a twenty-second plank when one of yours gets sent back. It never interrupts your turn, nothing is scored and nothing is saved. Ignore every one of them and the game plays exactly like the classic. Take them and a four-player game quietly turns into a few dozen bodyweight reps spread across twenty minutes, which is the whole idea behind putting board games on a fitness site.