Who we are
Orion Backgammon is published by Arthea, LLC and made by its game studio, Arthea GameLab (gamelab.arthea.ai). The studio is led by Valentin, the founder of Orion Backgammon. He sets the direction of the game and signs the guides you read on this site.
Orion is free to play on iPhone, iPad and Android: the App Store and Google Play listings are live, and the game is available in 44 languages.
Why backgammon?
Because few games have travelled as far. The same board of twenty four points is played as tavla in Turkey, tavli in Greece, nardy in Russia, takhteh nard in Iran, tawla across the Arab world and shesh besh in Israel, in cafés and living rooms that have kept it alive for centuries. We wrote about that journey in the names of backgammon.
Yet online, the game rarely gets the craft that much younger genres take for granted. We changed a great deal around backgammon and nothing inside it: fifteen checkers, two dice and a doubling cube, played to the international rules explained in how to play backgammon.
Why provably fair dice?
In a dice game, the dice are everything, and “is this app rigged?” is the question every online player eventually asks. We decided not to answer it with a promise. Before a server game starts, Orion publishes a SHA-256 commitment to a secret seed; every roll is derived from that seed with HMAC-SHA256; when the game ends the seed is revealed.
Anyone can then recompute every roll of a finished game in their own browser, with no account, at orion.arthea.ai/verify. Nobody, not even us, can change the dice once the game has begun. The longer answer is in can online backgammon be rigged.
How is the game made?
- Twelve handmade destinations. From Tangier Café to Orion itself, each destination has its own handmade board and its own music.
- Landscape first. The table is designed for a phone held sideways, so the board stays large and nothing floats over the felt that does not need to be there.
- A rules engine tested on its own.Bar entry, forced moves, the higher die rule, bearing off, gammons and the cube are checked separately from the interface, and online matches are settled by the server, not by the phone in someone’s hand.
- Built version after version with players. Every update follows real player feedback, and the team reads every message that reaches us.
What does Orion not do?
- No ads today, and no advertising SDK in the app.
- No third-party analytics. See the privacy policy for exactly what the game keeps.
- No real money. Coins and gems are virtual: there are no cash prizes and nothing can be cashed out.
How do I contact the Orion team?
Write to orion@arthea.ai. Questions about the game, a bug, a rule you think we got wrong or an idea for the next version: it all lands with the people who build Orion. The support page answers the most common questions.