ROGUEGAMMON Backgammon roguelike with mutation cards

ROGUEGAMMON is backgammon rebuilt for a world where the rules can be hacked.

Play the game you know, with the same board, the same dice and the same pip counting, but every match runs on mutation cards that bend the rules of backgammon. Play a double five times, send two blots to the bar with one hit, lock your opponent out of bearing off. Your opponent gets a card too, and the card you pick matters as much as the dice you roll.

Free 1v1 Quick Match

Jump into a fast one-on-one match against a CPU opponent anytime, with nothing to sign up for. Quick Match is free.

Cyber Lab

Inspect every card you've collected, study its effect, and plan your next run.

How a match works

It is a real game of backgammon: 15 checkers each, two dice, hitting, the bar and bearing off all work the way you know. Before a Quick Match you are dealt three random mutation cards from a pool of 44. You keep one, and the CPU takes one of the same three. Both cards stay on for the whole match, so no two matches play the same way.

Cards that change the game

• Doubles Engine (legendary): on a natural double you play the number five times instead of four.
• Shatter Blot: when you hit a blot, the opponent blot directly in front of it goes to the bar too.
• Mirror Reflex: when your blot is hit, the checker that hit it is sent to the bar as well.
• Home Security: your opponent cannot bear off while they leave a blot in their home board.
• Compulsory Hit: if your opponent has any move that hits, they must take it.
• Black Ice: one point is frozen at the start, and any opponent checker that stops there goes straight to the bar.

The 44 cards come in families (dice, hitting, the bar, gates, bearing off, the race, marked checkers) and four rarities, from common to legendary.

Run Mode: a campaign you build as you climb

Run Mode is where the cards become a deck. You start a run with a single card. Each stage is a match against a boss, and beating a boss wins you its card, so your deck grows as you climb the 44 stages through 7 acts. Before every stage you choose which cards to bring. You start with one card slot and can open up to three with the Neon Chips you earn from each win, and chips also pay for a die reroll mid-match or for skipping a regular stage.

The 7 acts are Boot Sector, Street Level, The Grid, Deep Net, Black Market, Core Breach and Singularity, and at the end of each one waits a Protocol Boss. It has no deck. It forces one corrupted rule on the match instead, and the final boss, Omega Core, runs every protocol you have beaten, switching to a new one every 3 turns.

You choose how a run treats losses, and the choice stays for the whole run:

• Campaign: lose a match and you replay the same stage. If a boss beats you by a gammon, it captures the card you brought, and you have to beat that boss to win it back.
• Roguelite: lose once and the run goes back to stage 1. Every card you have won stays in your deck, nothing is ever captured, and each stage pays double chips. The game keeps your best stage, so every attempt is a try to get further.

Run Mode is a one-time unlock, and it also removes ads from the entire app.

Free players see a small banner on the main menu and an occasional ad between 1v1 Quick Matches. Run Mode owners never see an ad, anywhere in the app.

Reboot the oldest game on the board.

Out now on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets.