If you have played ludo, you already know most of this. Here is one turn in Ludoo, beat by beat, on the real screens. Then the parts every family argues about.
The board marks every square a number can reach, and tells you why a piece cannot move when it cannot.
Drag on your phone and let go. The die arcs across the glass, lands and settles.
The physics run on your phone. The server decides the face, so the same flick is the same result for everyone watching. If the die leaves the table, that throw is gone.
There is no button to press.
A six throws again. Numbers you have not spent stay in your hand, so you can keep throwing before deciding what any of them buys.
When the throws run out, the table says so. Here, a six and a four are held to play.
Six to come out · a six throws againEach number in your hand buys one move. Bring a piece out on a six, move one along, or send somebody home.
The board marks every square your numbers can reach. If a piece cannot move, the board tells you why.
One number · one moveLand on an opponent and that piece goes back to the start. It has to come out on a six again.
There is also the sideways kick, the one your cousin says is not a real rule. That one is a table setting.
Kick back to startOnce round the board, each piece turns up its own home lane. It has to land exactly on the last square.
First seat home wins. The table decides whether the rest play on for second and third.
Four pieces · one lap eachEvery seat has a base, a start square in its colour and a home lane to the centre. This is red's lap.
One to four players, or two against two as teams. Seat friends, or seat the characters.
Three characters, one of you. It runs on the phone, so it works with no signal.
Hand one phone round the room. The table remembers whose turn it is.
Start a table and share the code. Friends sit down from their own phones, wherever they are.
Open table.ludoo.online on the TV. The TV is the board and every phone is a controller.
Each of these is a setting or a stated ruling, not an assumption. You settle it before the match, so nobody argues during it.
Some tables lose the whole turn on a third six. Some keep them. Ludoo treats it as a setting, because both tables exist and both are right. The rule
Kicking across a lane rather than along it. Whether it reaches one square or the whole lane changes the game completely, so it is set before the match rather than argued during it. The rule
A six may be added to the other numbers in your hand as one movement, and that movement is legal only if it lands on an opponent and takes them. It buys reach, not passage: the chain still walks every square, so a wall in the way stops it however well the numbers add up. The rule
Two of your pieces on one square hold it. Whether anyone may pass a wall, and what happens when two meet, is set by the rules in force. The rule
A die that bounces off is a die that did not count. The physics run on your phone and the server decides the outcome, so the same flick is the same result for everyone watching. The rule
The full ruling on each is being settled in the rules workshops. See where the rules stand.
Learn it by losing
The characters will teach you faster than this page will.