ℹ️ About
A real stone, a real mystery
The Ludus Coriovalli is a genuine Roman-era game board — object 04433 at Het Romeins Museum in Heerlen, the Netherlands, recovered near the old Coriovallum fort. It survived roughly 1,800 years, but no one ever wrote down its rules. The only direct evidence of how it was played is the wear on its incised lines.
In 2026 a research team really did use AI-driven simulations to search for rule sets whose wear matched the stone — and inferred a blocking game of the Hare-&-Hounds family. RelicForge lets you do a kid-sized version of the same reasoning by hand.
The most important part 🤔
Remember: a plausible rule set is not a proven one. The scientists warn that a search will always find SOME rules that fit the wear — so the best you can honestly say is "this is a plausible way it may have been played," never "this is how it was played."
That is not a weakness — it is exactly how honest science works. You can reach a strong, well-supported guess, and still say out loud: “this is plausible, not proven.”
Sources
- Crist, W., Soemers, D. J. N. J., et al. (2026). Ludus Coriovalli: using artificial-intelligence-driven simulations to identify rules for an ancient board game. Antiquity.
- AFP/Yahoo summary (Soemers: 'the system will always find some rules' caveat).
- Object 04433, Het Romeins Museum (Thermenmuseum), Heerlen, Netherlands.
RelicForge is a clean-room educational reconstruction built from these published, non-copyrightable observations. The rule-bricks and simulation are our own.
Your privacy
- ✅ Runs entirely on your device — the wear simulation is precomputed; nothing is sent anywhere.
- ✅ No account, no login, no personal information.
- ✅ No AI companion, no chat. The “dig crew” are characters that explain the reasoning — they never talk back or collect anything.
- ✅ No ads, no tracking.