Game History Library
Every game in this collection has its own story - some over five thousand years old, some barely a decade. Read through them here, in roughly the order each game first appeared, or jump straight to any one's full history page.
Dates for the oldest games are approximate - their exact origins are often lost to history or debated by historians.
-
c. 3100 BCE
The story of Bingo
Bingo grew from number-drawing and lottery games in Europe.
Full history →Senet
One of the oldest board games ever found - and one whose exact rules have been lost for thousands of years.
Full history → -
c. 2600 BCE
Ur
At roughly 4,600 years old, the Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest board games ever discovered - and, thanks to a piece of detective work spanning two millennia, one of the few ancient games we can still play by rules reconstructed from an ancient written source.
Full history → -
antiquity (patterns), 16th century (hedges)
Maze
Mazes are among the oldest puzzles: drawn on walls and floors, planted as hedges, printed in puzzle books.
Full history → -
c. 1400 BCE
Morris
Few games have been carved into as many different surfaces across as many centuries as Nine Men's Morris - from Egyptian temple roofs to English cathedral cloisters.
Full history → -
c. 4th century BCE
Go
Go is one of the oldest board games still played in its original form - a game of territory and stones with roots that likely reach back over 2,500 years in China.
Full history → -
c. 1st century BCE (Rome)
Tic-Tac-Toe
Probably the best-known pencil-and-paper game of all - with roots in ancient Rome and a place in the history of computers.
Full history → -
Iron Age, c. 400 CE
Hnefatafl (Viking Chess)
One of the oldest board game families in Northern Europe, played across the Viking world for centuries before chess ever arrived there.
Full history → -
1732 CE (documented)
Tablut
The best-documented member of the entire Tafl family, thanks to one 18th-century naturalist's notebook.
Full history → -
1st millennium CE (debated)
Mancala
Mancala isn't one game but an entire family of them - among the oldest game families on Earth, built around the simple, universal act of moving seeds or stones between pits.
Full history → -
traditional, exact origin undated
Bagh-Chal
Nepal's most iconic traditional board game: tigers hunting goats across a lattice of lines, with roots far older than any written record of the rules.
Full history → -
traditional, exact origin undated
Surakarta
A traditional Indonesian board game named after the very city on Java where it is believed to have originated.
Full history → -
traditional, pre-contact Hawaii
Konane
A traditional Native Hawaiian game of stones and strategy, carved directly into the land it was played on.
Full history → -
traditional, exact origin undated
Klappenkasten
A traditional dice game with a row of numbered flaps, played in pubs and on ships - where and when exactly it began is not certain.
Full history → -
traditional, exact origin undated
Steckwürfeln
A small traditional dice game on a board with numbered holes and pegs - simple, old and still sold as a wooden pocket game.
Full history → -
traditional, exact origin undated
Sternjagd
Chase games with a die are traditional in many cultures; this version has its own board with arrows.
Full history → -
three in a row: ancient idea; this game: own invention
Kleeberg
Kleeberg is a new game with its own rules; it builds on the old idea of getting three in a row.
Full history → -
c. 6th century CE
Chess
From an ancient Indian war game to the world's most studied board game - chess has crossed continents and centuries to become what it is today.
Full history → -
c. 10th century CE
Xiangqi
Chinese chess shares deep roots with international chess, yet took its own distinct path over more than a thousand years to become the game played by hundreds of millions today.
Full history → -
c. 12th century CE
Checkers
Checkers (draughts) is a game of simple rules and deep strategy, born from combining an ancient board with a newer way of capturing.
Full history → -
1283 (Libro de los juegos)
Alquerque
A small jumping game on a board of lines, written down in 13th-century Spain - and the ancestor of checkers.
Full history → -
c. 14th century (England)
Fox and Geese
A hunt game from medieval Europe: one fox, a flock of geese and a cross-shaped board.
Full history → -
1467 (Alberti's cipher disk), own game
Turn the Rings
Rings with signs that are turned against each other are old: Leon Battista Alberti described a cipher disk of two turning rings in 1467. The puzzle here is made for PaperGames.
Full history → -
c. 1500 (Chinese rings), flat version new
Loosen the Rings
Ring puzzles are old - the Chinese rings were described around 1500; this flat version with gaps is new.
Full history → -
c. 13th century CE (China)
Domino
Small tiles with pips, known in China for many centuries and in Europe since the 18th century - though how the two traditions are connected is still an open question.
Full history → -
16th century CE
Shogi
Japan's take on the chess family, and the only major variant where a captured piece doesn't leave the game - it joins the side that captured it.
Full history → -
c. 16th-17th century CE
Fanorona
The national board game of Madagascar, and a source of real cultural pride and legend.
Full history → -
17th century CE (name)
Backgammon
Backgammon's family tree runs through nearly every civilization that has rolled dice - from ancient Mesopotamia and Rome to the coffee houses of the modern Middle East.
Full history → -
1697
Peg Solitaire
A single-player puzzle old enough to have its own origin legend, and the subject of one of the more surprising results in recreational mathematics.
Full history → -
18th century; 1899 (USA)
Blackjack
Games of reaching 21 are old: the first written mention is in a book by Miguel de Cervantes, and around 1899 the American form was named blackjack.
Full history → -
1782 (first mention); Bavaria 1849
Schafkopf
Schafkopf is first mentioned in 1782 in Saxony; the first game clearly from Bavaria is recorded for 1849.
Full history → -
early 19th century (USA)
Poker
Poker spread in the American South in the early 19th century; Texas Hold'em, with two cards of your own and five shared ones, is traditionally dated to the early 20th century.
Full history → -
c. 1810-1813 (Altenburg)
Skat
Skat was created around 1810 to 1813 in Altenburg in Thuringia; the German Skat Association, founded in 1899, has its seat there.
Full history → -
1813 (oldest surviving book)
Tangram
Seven pieces cut from a square: the puzzle comes from China, where the oldest surviving book about it was printed in 1813; from 1817 it became a craze in Europe.
Full history → -
1836 (described by E. W. Lane)
Seega
A game from Egypt, described in 1836: place your stones two at a time, then trap the enemy between two of your own.
Full history → -
19th century (Mexico)
Concan
An old Mexican game often named as the forerunner of rummy and gin rummy.
Full history → -
19th century (Russia)
Durak
The best-known card game of Russia, where losing gives you a nickname until the next game.
Full history → -
1821 (Germany)
Old Maid
The rules of the German card game Black Peter were written down as early as 1821.
Full history → -
1833 (Germany)
War
German variants of the card game War are mentioned as early as 1833.
Full history → -
19th century (Germany)
Doppelkopf
A game played with a doubled pack, in which you often have to find out during play who your partner is.
Full history → -
19th century
Klondike
The single most iconically named, most widely played patience game there is - so ubiquitous that for a couple of generations of computer users, "Solitaire" meant this one specific game.
Full history → -
1880 (15 puzzle); arrow version recent
Glide Lanes
Pieces that may slide only one way are relatives of the sliding puzzles that became a craze in 1880; the version with arrows is a young puzzle.
Full history → -
1880s
Dots and Boxes
A pencil-and-paper game more than a century old, and a genuine subject of serious mathematical study.
Full history → -
1883
Reversi
A Victorian parlor game that came back almost a century later in Japan, under a new name and with a fixed start.
Full history → -
1883 (Tower of Hanoi)
Shape Sort
Moving pieces between holders by fixed rules is an old idea in puzzles - the Tower of Hanoi did it in 1883.
Full history → -
1883-1884
Halma
An American reworking of an older English game, popular for well over a century as a simple race that's easy to learn but still rewards careful planning.
Full history → -
1886 (Biritch); contract bridge 1925
Bridge
Bridge comes from whist; the first known rules ("Biritch, or Russian Whist") date from 1886, contract bridge from 1925.
Full history → -
ancient India; England 1892
Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders comes from a family of Indian dice board games and reached England in the 1890s.
Full history → -
modern variant of Ludo
Arrow Ludo
Ludo with a shortcut across the middle, built on the old race game Pachisi.
Full history → -
traditional Korean folk game
Yut
Yut Nori is a traditional Korean folk game with four sticks, played above all at the Lunar New Year.
Full history → -
1892 (Germany); name 1928 (USA)
Chinese Checkers
A star-board descendant of the older game Halma, marketed under an exotic name that has nothing to do with where it was actually invented.
Full history → -
1893 (Professor Hoffmann)
Matchstick Puzzles
Matches became an everyday thing in the 19th century and soon a puzzle material: Professor Hoffmann's book Puzzles Old and New (1893) already has a chapter of puzzles with matches.
Full history → -
1896 (England)
Ludo
A modern, mass-produced descendant of one of India's oldest board games.
Full history → -
1897
Link the Pairs
Joining pairs with lines that may not cross is an old puzzle idea - Sam Loyd printed a form of it in 1897.
Full history → -
traditional, undated
Thirty-One
A quick pub and family game with many names, in which three cards and one suit decide everything.
Full history → -
traditional, undated
Categories
A word game played with nothing but paper and pens, known under a different name in almost every country - and with an origin nobody wrote down.
Full history → -
traditional, undated
Mau Mau
A card game for the whole family, played in countless house-rule versions - and like many folk games, nobody knows who invented it.
Full history → -
exact date undocumented
Rummy (Rommé)
The rummy that Germany plays with two packs and jokers - one of the many games in which players collect sets and runs.
Full history → -
undocumented (school exercise books)
Pairs to Ten
A pen-and-paper puzzle from school exercise books; where it comes from is not documented.
Full history → -
1970s (role-playing games), own game
Adventure Book
A role-playing game for one, with dice, values and rooms to explore – a kind of game that goes back to the tabletop role-playing games and adventure books of the 1970s.
Full history → -
around 2000 (worker placement), own game
Forest Village
A village-building game with worker placement and a growing row of cards – two ideas that became popular in board games around the year 2000.
Full history → -
1812/1815 (Grimms' tales), own game
Fairy-Tale Villains
A game in which everyone plays a villain from the Grimms' fairy tales – figures that have been in the Children's and Household Tales since 1812.
Full history → -
1993 (first collectible card game), fixed decks
Card Duel
A card game in which two players fight with creatures and spells – a young kind of game that goes back to the 1990s.
Full history → -
undocumented (newspapers, children's magazines)
Spot the Difference
A puzzle known from newspapers, children's magazines and puzzle books; when and where it first appeared is not reliably documented.
Full history → -
modern (puzzle books, school workbooks)
Calculation Grid
A number puzzle of calculations in rows and columns, related to the ancient magic square of the numbers 1 to 9.
Full history → -
modern (school workbooks and thinking tests), own game
Find the Misfit
Finding the one that does not fit is a classic exercise in school books and thinking tests - it trains sorting things by their features.
Full history → -
modern (picture dice and collecting games), own game
Pasture Friends
Games with pictures instead of numbers and cards to collect are among the first games small children play - this one combines both.
Full history → -
modern (dice and picture games), own game
Zoo Toss
Rolling dice and matching pictures are among the first games small children play - this one combines both with a set of zoo animals.
Full history → -
1938 (Yacht), own game
Critter Roll
Rolling five dice up to three times and choosing where to score is an old dice game idea - here with animals instead of numbers.
Full history → -
c. 18th century (silhouettes), own game
Whose Shadow Is It?
Shadows have been traced, cut out and played with for centuries - matching a shadow to its object is a small exercise in looking closely.
Full history → -
modern (school workbooks and intelligence tests), own game
Continue the Pattern
Rows of repeating signs are as old as pottery and weaving - and continuing them is a favourite task in school books and tests.
Full history → -
1907 (Dudeney), named 1953 (Golomb)
Pentomino Puzzle
Twelve pieces of five squares each: a puzzle published by Henry Dudeney in 1907, named "pentominoes" by Solomon Golomb in 1953.
Full history → -
early 20th century (as Pelmanism)
Pairs
A game that needs no rule book at all: turn over two cards and remember where everything was.
Full history → -
early 20th century
Gomoku (Five in a Row)
A simple line-them-up game whose very simplicity forced competitive players to change its rules.
Full history → -
20th century (Middle East)
Trix
A modern classic of the coffee houses and family evenings of the Middle East, in which every player gets to rule a kingdom.
Full history → -
1880
Sliding Puzzle
A box of numbered tiles and one empty place: in 1880 the sliding puzzle was a craze in the United States.
Full history → -
1883
Tower of Hanoi
A puzzle from 1883 that came with an invented legend - and a neat rule for the fewest moves.
Full history → -
19th century
Dot Picture
Joining numbered dots to make a picture is an old puzzle form from children's books and puzzle pages.
Full history → -
1901 (Bouton)
Nim
A game of taking stones that Charles L. Bouton named and solved in 1901.
Full history → -
20th century
Hidden Odd Ones
Finding the one thing that is different in a crowd is an old puzzle from children's pages and a well-known test of attention.
Full history → -
c. 1939 (Montevideo; date disputed)
Canasta
Canasta comes from Montevideo, Uruguay; it is usually dated to 1939, though some sources give a later year. It came to New York in 1949.
Full history → -
1942
Hex
A rare case of the same simple, elegant game being invented twice - according to the usual account independently - by two people who'd go on to become well known for entirely different reasons.
Full history → -
1950 (as Cross Sums)
Kakuro
Like Sudoku, Kakuro started life in an American puzzle magazine under a different name, and only became a household word decades later on the other side of the Pacific.
Full history → -
1956 (as Yahtzee)
Yatzy
A dice game whose scoring categories - pairs, three and four of a kind, a full house, a straight - read like a hand of poker, because that's exactly where they came from.
Full history → -
1962 (Zebra puzzle)
Who Took the Cake?
Logic puzzles in which a small case is solved by reasoning alone are much older than computers.
Full history → -
Nikoli, exact date undocumented
Hashiwokakero
A pure counting-and-connectivity puzzle from the same Japanese publisher that turned Sudoku into a global phenomenon, with a name and a flavor that both trace back to the idea of connecting things with bridges.
Full history → -
exact date undocumented
Skyscrapers
Skyscrapers belongs to the same family of Latin-square puzzles Sudoku comes from, but adds a distinctive twist that gives it its name: a line-of-sight rule read in from just outside the grid.
Full history → -
1967 (Milton Bradley edition)
Admiral's Grid
A pencil-and-paper guessing game turned world-famous plastic-and-pegs classic - and, here, a generic version of it under a different name.
Full history → -
before 1970
Bulls and Cows
A code-breaking game of pure logic, with no rival player to outwit, that began as a pencil-and-paper guessing game and went on to become a favorite subject for computer scientists studying how to search for a hidden answer efficiently.
Full history → -
1974
Four in a Row
A simple gravity-powered idea that turned into a worldwide classic.
Full history → -
1978
FreeCell
A century-old card game family whose most famous variant, unusually, is famous largely because of a very specific piece of 1990s software.
Full history → -
1979
Sudoku
Unlike every other game in this collection, Sudoku has no ancient pedigree at all - the puzzle in its modern form only dates from 1979.
Full history → -
1979 (as Number Place)
Animal Sudoku
Picture Sudoku on small grids is a children's version of the number puzzle that became popular around the world in the mid-2000s.
Full history → -
1981 (the pushing principle)
Crate Pusher
A puzzle about pushing crates in a storeroom, and why it has a different name here.
Full history → -
1986
Mahjong Solitaire
A single-player tile-matching game named after, and visually borrowing from, a completely different four-player game it has almost nothing else in common with.
Full history → -
1987
Nonograms
A logic puzzle invented twice in Japan at about the same time, independently of each other - and named after one of its two inventors.
Full history → -
late 20th century
Marble Brink
A pushing game for two on a hexagonal board, in which the only way to capture is to shove the opponent's marbles over the edge.
Full history → -
1988
Amazons
The Game of the Amazons is a modern abstract strategy game about carving up territory by permanently blocking off the board, one square at a time.
Full history → -
1989
Minesweeper
A puzzle whose defining rule - a completely safe first move - only became standard once computers, rather than a printed page, could generate a fresh board on demand.
Full history → -
1989 (Nikoli)
Slitherlink
Unlike Kakuro or Sudoku - both puzzles that started life elsewhere and only later passed through Japan - Slitherlink is a home-grown Nikoli invention from the start, with no earlier Western original to trace back to.
Full history → -
1990s (Japan)
Killer Sudoku
Sudoku meets the sums of Kakuro: a variant that trades given digits for arithmetic.
Full history → -
1995
Light Switch
A 1990s handheld electronic puzzle that turned out to hide a genuinely elegant piece of mathematics underneath its simple button grid.
Full history → -
1997
Wall Maze
Wall Maze is a modern abstract strategy game that turns a simple race across a grid into a genuine battle of tactics, just by adding a handful of walls.
Full history → -
1998 (Windows)
Spider Solitaire
A two-deck patience game with no exact birth certificate, like most of the family it belongs to - but one whose modern fame traces back to the very same company that made Klondike a household name.
Full history → -
2001 (Japan)
No Neighbors
A modern logic puzzle from Japan with one simple twist: equal digits keep their distance.
Full history → -
2003
Cat Places
The rules come from a logic puzzle devised in 2003 for the World Puzzle Championship in the Netherlands; here sleeping cats take the place of stars.
Full history → -
c. 2004 (Japan)
Calcudoku
A young puzzle with old roots: arithmetic cages laid over a Latin square, first devised as a classroom exercise.
Full history → -
mid-2000s (outside Japan)
Futoshiki
A Japanese number puzzle whose name simply means inequality: a Latin square with small signs between the cells.
Full history → -
2012 (Windows 8)
Pyramid Solitaire
A patience game built around a completely different mechanic from Klondike, FreeCell, or Spider: instead of building sequences, you clear the board by pairing cards that add up to 13.
Full history → -
2014
Card Tactics
A race across the board in which open move cards, not the pieces, decide how a stone may move.
Full history → -
2014
2048
A game built almost entirely out of other games' ideas, made in a weekend, and cloned by more people than perhaps any browser game before it.
Full history → -
PaperGames 2026
Blocked Path
Blocked Path is a race game at PaperGames; it takes up old elements of dice race games such as sending tokens home and blocking the way.
Full history → -
PaperGames 2026
Devilish Seven
Go on or stop? Devilish Seven is a push-your-luck card game made for PaperGames.
Full history → -
PaperGames 2026
Puzzle Advent Calendar
Counting the days to Christmas: from chalk lines on a door to printed calendars with small doors - and here one small puzzle a day.
Full history → -
PaperGames 2026
Ridge Roll
Roll on or make camp? Ridge Roll is a push-your-luck dice game made for PaperGames, in the old family of dice games in which one more roll can cost everything.
Full history →