Coming to the Forgotten Games iOS app
First crowd the board. Then make it breathe.
Most games begin with open space. Seega begins by taking it away. Twenty-four stones fill a five-by-five board until only the centre remains empty; then the first move breaks the pattern open and a quiet placement game turns into a sudden contest of flanks, chains and escape routes.
See how the app edition plays
Beyond the board
In the 1830s, Edward William Lane described a form of the game from observations in Egypt. In 1890, H. Carrington Bolton encountered Seega near St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. Read together, the accounts reveal a game recognisable across time and place, but alive in more than one form rather than fixed in a single rulebook.
On Sai Island in Sudan, a 2011–12 study found Seeja familiar to people it encountered. That moment of recognition gives the paper trail a human spark: a game named in nineteenth-century Egypt and Sinai still present in memory under another spelling and in another place. It is a tantalising glimpse, rather than a survey of play today.
The documentary trail moves from Egypt to a particular encounter at Mount Sinai, then to a study on Sai Island in Sudan. Following it is less like locating a birthplace than watching a family of ideas surface in different places: a crowded grid, an empty centre and capture by enclosure.
The turn that changes everything
Placement is not housekeeping; it is the slow construction of the trap you will soon have to survive. When movement finally begins, the centre acts like a released spring. Stones slip into gaps, enemies are caught between two sides and one capture can open the path to another. Seega changes character in a single move.
From first move to victory
This is the selected Forgotten Games app edition. Other ways of playing exist.
Each player has twelve stones. Take turns placing two stones on the 5-by-5 board, leaving the centre empty.
The first movement enters the centre. Afterwards, stones move one step orthogonally into an empty adjacent cell.
Move to flank an opposing stone between two of your own, horizontally or vertically.
After a capture, the same stone may make another capturing move. In the app, continuation is optional.
The version in the app
The app follows a Bolton-aligned core, but its no-legal-move loss and threefold draw are explicit digital choices—not historical rules recorded by Lane or Bolton.
Follow the evidence
These are the principal records and accounts reviewed for this introduction. A source can show a dated game, ruleset or practice; it cannot by itself prove a single origin or an unchanged tradition.
Forgotten Games for iPhone and iPad
The final App Store destination will be added before release.
Explore all seven games