Zenet

A simple version of Senet, the ancient Egyptian pastime.

Rules

• On each player's turn, they first throw four marked sticks. Their result is the number of white sides showing (1-4), or if all black sides, the result is a 5. (Black starts with their pawns slightly behind and thus throws first.)
• The player then chooses one of their pawns to move that many spaces forward. If they have at least one legal move, they must take it. If they have no legal moves, their turn is skipped.
• A pawn may not move into a space already occupied by another pawn of the same player.
• A pawn may attack an opposing pawn by moving into its space, sending it back to the square where the attacker started from. Exceptions:
  • Defense: Two or more consecutive pawns cannot be attacked.
  • Blockade: Three or more consecutive pawns cannot be attacked nor passed over by the opponent. Note that blockades do not round corners (10→11 or 20→21).
  • Squares 15, 26, 28, and 29 are safe and cannot be attacked. (Square 30 is not!)
• A pawn must first land on square 26 before continuing beyond it.
• If a pawn lands on square 27, it is returned to square 15 or the first empty square before it.
• If a pawn is on squares 28, 29, or 30, the player can only move it by throwing the exact number (3, 2, or 1 respectively) to bear it off the board.
• The first player to bear off all their pawns is the winner.

Made over a few days as a learning project for the Godot engine.

Credits

• "Truth in the Stones" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/