🏺 Ages 9–14 · Archaeology & Reasoning

RelicForge

A real Roman game stone survived more than 1,500 years (late Roman, roughly AD 250–476) — but nobody wrote down how it was played. The only clue is the wear on its lines. Be the archaeologist: build a rule set, run the wear simulation, and see how plausibly it fits the real stone.

🔎 Start the dig 📜 How it works

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The dig Meet the real worn stone, build a rule set from bricks, run the wear simulation, and see how plausible your reconstruction is. How it works How archaeologists (and an AI) reason from wear to rules — and why the honest answer is “plausible,” never “proven.” About The Ludus Coriovalli of Heerlen, the real 2026 study behind it, and how your data stays on your device.

The evidence on the stone

Everything you get to work from — the actual clues archaeologists read off the artifact:

A board diagonal is among the most-worn lines.
The centre line is comparatively lightly used.
Most of the board shows use — pieces travelled widely.

Scholars think it was a blocking game — few pieces, a small board, trap your opponent (the “Hare-&-Hounds” family). Your job: find a rule set whose wear matches.

Meet the dig crew

Five guides — each is one step of how you reason from a worn stone to a rule set.

Coria the Reader reads the WORN lines — where a stone is rubbed smooth is where the pieces travelled
Brickwright builds a game from swappable rule-bricks — change one brick, change the game
Playra plays your rules hundreds of times so the board slowly wears — just like the real one did
Plausa weighs how well your worn board matches the real stone, one fact at a time
Cavea keeps you honest: a plausible rule set is never a PROVEN one

…led by Vallis, the museum archaeologist who reads the stone with you.

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