Fifteen Home
Backgammon for one or two, on one screen. Touch an end and that side is yours.
What it is
Backgammon. Race all fifteen of your checkers home, then off the board. The board plays both sides until somebody touches an end, so it is a one-player game and a two-player game without a mode screen between them.
It is here instead of chess for one reason. In a room where people are waiting, the two players are never matched — a pure-skill game is decided by move three and nobody sits down twice. The dice compress the gap far enough that a beginner beats a veteran often enough to want another game, while the skill is still real over a series.
The dice are never touched
Players accuse backgammon programs of cheating more than any other game, and often they are wrong — but some programs do weight the rolls, and the accusation sticks to all of them.
One generator, used identically for both sides. No difficulty setting goes anywhere near it, and the opponent is tuned by how well it plays rather than by what it rolls.
The board opens at rest
The starting position, nothing rolled, nothing moving. After fifteen seconds with nobody touching it, it begins playing itself. Touching either end deals a fresh board rather than handing over a game already in progress, then waits again before the first roll so the other person has time to take the far side.
The far player's half is drawn the other way up, because somebody is sitting there.
How to play
- Take a sideTouch your end of the board
- Move a checkerTap it, then tap where it goes
- See the rulesRules
Tapping a checker lights every point it could legally reach, with the die that move would spend shown on the destination. A tap that is not a legal move does nothing.
On a desktop, click instead of tapping, and nothing is behind a key. Unlike Far End, two people can share one mouse here, because the turns are separate in time rather than in space.
What it does not have
No doubling cube. It is central to serious backgammon and opaque to everyone else, and a cube-aware opponent is a second game's worth of work — so it is left out rather than half-built. A single game, not a match to a points target, because a match runs long for a screen somebody is waiting in front of.
Nothing is stored on your device at all.
What isn't settled yet
Whether fifteen seconds is the right wait before the board starts playing itself. Long enough and a passer-by never sees it move; short enough and somebody reaching for it finds a game already underway.
Whether two strangers will take an end each without either asking a question. Nothing that runs in a browser can test that.
Build Log
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Build 9
The board opens at rest: the starting position, nothing rolled, nothing moving, until fifteen seconds pass with nobody touching it and it begins playing itself. Touching either end deals a fresh board rather than handing over the game already in progress, then waits again before the first roll so somebody can take the other side. Worth writing down: choosing the opening state was the easy half. Start-up and the reset a host page calls both began a turn the moment the board was created, so it left that state within a second of loading; both leave it alone now and let the board start itself.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine and no embedded typefaces — it uses whichever fonts your device already has. Cover art was rendered from the game’s own board-drawing code.
Fifteen Home is original work by Launchway Games.