oldest strategy games

Man, I’ve been digging into the history of strategy games lately, and it’s wild how far back this stuff goes. So, I started with a simple question: What’s the oldest strategy game ever?

My first move was to hit up the internet, of course. I typed in “oldest strategy game” and started scrolling through the results. It seemed like there are a few contenders for the title.

Some sources pointed to Senet, an ancient Egyptian game, as being one of the oldest. I found mentions that it’s “believed to be” or “known to be” the oldest, but it wasn’t super clear. It definitely sounded ancient, though.

Then, I stumbled upon Mancala. Multiple websites claimed that some historians consider this the absolute oldest game in the world. They talked about archaeological evidence from around 6000 BC in Jordan. Apparently, the ancient Nabataeans might have played a version of it. That’s some serious history right there.

Another one that popped up was the Royal Game of Ur. It is said to have originated around 4,600 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. The thing that got me was that the game’s rules were actually written down on a cuneiform tablet by some Babylonian astronomer back in 177 BC. Imagine figuring out how to play a game from rules that old!

• Tried to piece together the timeline.
• Looked into how these games were played.
• Compared the different claims about which game is the oldest.

I also got sidetracked a bit and learned about early strategy video games. Turns out, they were inspired by tabletop games like Chess, Checkers, and Go. There was even something called The Sumerian Game, which was an economic simulation based on the ancient city-state of Lagash. On top of that, I found out that some of the first turn-based video games were text-based adventures like Colossal Cave Adventure (1976), Zork (1977), and Rogue (1980).

After diving deep into all this, I realized that tracing the history of strategy games is like trying to solve an ancient puzzle. There are so many pieces scattered across different cultures and time periods.

Conclusion

While I can’t say for sure which game is the absolute oldest, I definitely got a better appreciation for how long humans have been enjoying strategic gameplay. It’s pretty amazing to think that people thousands of years ago were engaging in games that share similarities with what we play today. It makes you feel connected to the past in a cool way, you know?