Primitive game design. Part 3: Let's fly to Egypt!

How long, shortly, did your humble finally get to the third part. Initially, I wanted to infuse into this article both history, and analysis, and conclusions, and much more, but then I figured and understood that everything would not fit here. Therefore, to begin with, let's talk about ancient Egypt and the very first game designers, among whom the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, was born.

In the meantime, you have not looked under the cat, ask yourself how our calendar and board games are connected with you. (Don't mind googling!)


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Forward to the past!

Origin. Myths and Religion.

Gentlemen from ancient Egypt, perhaps, were the first to guess to kill time off from work under the scorching sun with the help of a board game called “Senet”, which in our language is translated as “Passage”. Initially, the toy, which our African ancestors created as many as ~ 5,000 years ago, was simple entertainment, but with time of religious flourish, turned into something tightly interwoven with Egyptian belief in life after death.
When I first began to rummage through various sites in search of at least some more or less detailed information about the game itself and about the history of its occurrence, I came across an entertaining myth that I can not share.

The god of the sun Ra, the god of wisdom, Thoth, the god of the earth Geb, his twin sister, the goddess of the sky, Nut and Khonsu, the god of the moon, lived. Despite the fact that Hebe and Nut bound their kinship, they once fell in love with each other and became husband and wife. Ra, yielding to a fit of jealousy, cursed Nuth. The curse was that the lady could not on any of the days of the year (and at that time there were 360 ​​of them according to the old version) to give birth to Geb of children. Desperate to a state of complete despair, Nuth complained to Thoth, who once had warm feelings for her, and he in turn came up with a very cunning plan.
In order not to go directly to Ra and not to try to violate his will, the god of wisdom took advantage of the fact that, apart from the sun, the firmament replaces the lunar disk, and figured out how to "eat a cherry and not choke on a bone." By offering Khonsu to play the “Senet” created by him for 1/72 of the world from each day of the lunar year and winning 5 times, the god of wisdom added to the calendar those same 5 days during which Osiris, Isis, Seth, Nephthys and Choir were born.

Here are the things here.
This magnificent myth has reached our days thanks to Plutarch's treatise “On Isis and Osiris”, although the names in it are accordingly replaced by Greek analogues. In general, one can argue endlessly on this topic, because in one source the gods were cut into checkers, in the second - in general, in the bone (although how in this case did Thoth's wisdom come in handy in this case?). Nobody knows for sure.
But this is not the point. It is important how the game rules of the first board game were built. This is the oldest known to us game designs!

Training.

In principle, the world was up to the heap of games "overtake and win". As a result, the most common were the well-known backgammon. But Senet in the tactical part is not so far behind.
There should be two players. Each of them has 5 chips, which in turn are placed on a 3x10 field. Players take turns to determine the number of points per move by throwing four bilateral sticks into the air, representing an ancient analogue of the random number generator 1d5. (points from 1 to 4 - the white side of the sticks up after landing. 5 points - the black sides of all the sticks up)
The fact that the game did not start immediately was also considered important. At first, players throw sticks until one of them throws a one. By doing this, one of the players received a certain type of chips. After that, you can walk only when 2 or 3 falls out on sticks. I, as a modern game designer, do not understand this very much (something overlooked?), But I’m a little more than sure that there is some hidden meaning behind it .
The point of the game itself is to remove your chips from the board as quickly as possible and, if possible, to deprive the enemy of such happiness. In general, the playing field for Seneta is a straight line with several active gaming cells, but for compactness it is compressed in three rows, and therefore the passage of the entire field from beginning to end is the shape of the letter “S”.

When I translated the texts up to this point and brought it all together, I felt a sense of deja-vu. My “Labyrinth”, which I am developing, is actually an extended and patched version of ancient Seneta! And this, you want - believe, you want - no, purest coincidence. We go further.
When moving chips one way or another, a situation arises when there are N enemy chips ahead. The following scenarios were prepared for this case:

• Only one chip can stand on one field.
• You can only jump over one opponent's chip.
• In addition, they can be "cut down". By this is meant a simple change of position of the attacker and the attacker.
• You can cut down only the chip, which is "alone". Two chips next to "protect" from each other's attacks.
• It is logical to assume that the opponent's chips may be more than two. Three chips can be “razed” by cutting down the central one. Four - cut down any of the central two. What is the reason - it is difficult to say, this is the most accurate of the available formulations. As for more, I could not find anything intelligible.

A very important detail: if the way forward is blocked, then you need to walk backwards. If any movement options are blocked at all, the move is skipped.
Now, about the most delicious: active cells.
Dry rules are boring, so I added them with the additions from the work of the magnificent Egyptologist and historian Peter Picchione.

We pass the path of the soul.

The first cell in the upper-left corner is referred to as the “House of Thoth” . The deity in this case is represented as a bird sitting on the top of the standard. The one on the board initiates the game, because in the afterlife he is the first to meet the fallen and escort them to the “courtroom”. He also decided whether a fallen man could sail in a boat through hell with the command of the deity Ra.

"The House of Revival" - cell number 15. Presented in the form of a frog, the Egyptian symbol of resurrection. Often sits on the bow of a ship sailing on the very same boat. In this case, a widespread epithet is used to continue the life cycle after death. The player who got into this cell received an extra turn. According to other sources, the chips that died in the last cells of the board came back to life.

Cage №16 - “House of Networks” . Chips falling into this trap lose their turn. In the other world, sinners, the enemies of Ra, entangled in the networks of executioners, were subjected to eternal torture in a fiery trap.

In correlation with the “House of Networks” was the “House of Rejuvenation” , which was located on the cage №26. He gave the chips that stepped on it one more turn. If after that the sticks gave out the number 5, then this chip game ended. Otherwise, she either got into the “Water of Chaos”, or, in the absence of free cells, returned to the “House of Renaissance” altogether. Looking deeper into history, we can be sure that in this cell there is a connection with the mummification hall, where the body of the deceased was prepared for the transition to life after death.

Summarizing the information sources, in this moment I experienced some difficulty. On the one hand, this cell was a repetition of the activated ability of cell No. 15, but what is the connection with the repeated possibility to make one more move before the end of the game? In combination with the “Network House”, according to Picchione, this system was designed to compensate for the fact that the first player gained some advantage in the beginning. But from the point of view of game design, this again made little sense, moreover, according to publicly available information - in later versions of Seneta, “House of the Networks” was not designated at all, and “House of Renaissance” wore only the function of returning “dead” chips to life, which, in my opinion, it seems much more logical. One way or another, it is hardly possible to verify the accuracy of these rules.

Next is the cage, which is called the “Waters of Chaos” , and its number is 27. Through these waters, symbolically depicted on the playing field, the boat sails with the departed, heading straight to the realm of eternal life. Those guys who have not got a place have to end their long journey here. Chips, standing on this cell, are removed from the game and returned to the cell # 15. According to known data, no additional checks on the new entry "drowned" in the game was made. It is quite justified from the point of view of logic: the failure of the test would mean an inevitable loss for a player who could not complete all his chips in this case.

The fields numbered 28 and 29 were not available on all the artifacts found, which once again confirms the fact that it is impossible to find a single set of rules that would be absolutely true. Nevertheless, I consider it my duty to mention these two cells.

“The House of Three Truths” and “The House of Adoration” were depicted with the help of reminder symbols (three ibis birds and two people on their knees, for example. Sometimes points were simply used during the course). These are two of the last three fields. Chips, which have risen on these squares, could leave the board only on condition that 3 and 2 fell on the sticks, respectively.

And, finally, the last cell - "House of Ra" . Crossing it, the chips ended the game. There are no special rules for this house. Any number of points allowed the chip to finish the game, it is logical. The player who completed the game, could fully guarantee his reunion with the solar deity during his lifetime, which means eternal life and spiritual peace.

Evolution.

At the moment, there are a little more than eight dozen found boards for playing “Senet”. Most of them are almost radically different from each other: materials and sizes of boards and chips, colors, field designations. From banal schematics to detailed religious symbols. From fairly large stone fields to neat wooden boxes. Depending on the approximate time period to which this or that artifact belonged, it was possible to draw conclusions about the way of the game from simple fun to a kind of religious ritual.

And, although thousands of years have passed, the game continues to win hearts and even motivates ordinary people to be creative! Dozens of modern desktop versions of the game were created, some of which are simply works of art. No need to go far - just try to go through the pictures in any search engine. More than confident that some instances will surprise you especially!

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Table of contents:

• First part: Starting from scratch.
• The second part: From the skeleton to the muscles.
• Third part: Let's fly to Egypt!

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